ultimately cost americans their lives unless there is an effective crackdown. i quote from admiral mccraven, the head of our special operations command, who says we need to do the best we can to clamp down because sooner or later, it's going to cost people their lives or it's going to cost us our national security. this is another national security issue, my friends, and the fact is that i appreciate very much the fact that governor romney rightly referred to these leaks as contemptible and a betrayal of our national interest. and i would like to point out to my colleagues that, yes, there are supposedly investigations going on and acorresponding to media -- and according to media, that hundreds of people are being -- are being interviewed. well, why don't -- i'm no -- i'm no lawyer, i'm no prosecutor. senator graham may have some experience in that. but what about the 2009 g-20 economic summit, when according to the "new york times"

journalist david sanger -- quote -- "a senior official in the national security council tapped him on the shoulder and brought him to the presidential suite in the pittsburgh hotel where president obama was staying and where 'most of the rest of the national security staff was present.' there the journalist was allowed to review satellite images and other evidence that confirmed the existence of a secret nuclear site in iran." i wonder, i wonder how many people have the key to the presidential suite in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, hotel? you might want to start there. instead, we have two prosecutors, one of whom was a strong and great supporter of the president of the united states. and the same people -- i'm talking about the vice president of the united states and other others -- that strongly

supported a special counsel in the case of valerie plame and, of course, the abramoff case. we need a special counsel to find out who was responsible for these leaks. and i'd ask my colleague, senator graham, if he has additional comments on this issue. and it's -- it's receded somewhat in the media but the damage that has been done to our national security is significant. it has put lives at risk, and it has betrayed our allies. this is an issue that we cannot let go away until those who were responsible are made responsible for these actions. mr. graham: thank you. my comment, in response to your question, senator mccain, is that what we do today becomes precedent for tomorrow. so are we going to sit on the sidelines here and allow the attorney general, who is under siege by our colleagues in the house about the way he's handled

fast and furious and other matters, to appoint two u.s. attorneys that have to answer to him to investigate allegations against the very white house that appointed him? the reason that so many democrats wrote to president bush and said, you cannot possibly investigate the scooter libby-valerie blame leak because it -- val i will plame leak because it involves people very close to you. let's just read the letter. "we're at risk of seeing this investigation so compromised that those responsible for this national security breach will never be identified and prosecuted. public confidence in the integrity of this investigation will be substantially bolstered by the appointment of a special counsel." senator biden, "i think they should appoint a specialty

prosecutor but if they're not going to do that, which i suspect they're not, is get the information out as quick as they possibly can. this is not a minor thing. there's been a federal crime committed. the question is, who did it. and the president should do everything in thinks power to demonstrate that there's an urgency to find that out." then he goes on later and says, "there's been a federal crime committed. you can't possibly investigate it yourself because people close to you are involved." the abramoff scandal, which involved jack abramoff, a person very close to house leadership and some people in the bush administration, our democratic colleagues, 34 of them, asked -- said the following, "f.b.i. officials said that the abramoff investigation involves systematic corruption within the highest levels of government. such an assertion indicates extraordinary circumstances and it is in the public interest that you act under your existing statutory authority to appoint a special counsel." so our democratic colleagues

back during the bush administration said, we don't trust you enough to investigate compromising national security by having a agent outed allegedly by members of your administration. we don't trust the republican part apparatus enough to investigate jack abramoff because you're so close to him and that you should have special counsels appointed. well, guess what? they did. here's what i'm saying. i don't trust this white house to investigate themselves. i think this wreaks of a cover coverup. i think that the highest levels of the -- this government surrounding the president intentionally over a 45-day period leaked various stories regarding our national security programs to make the administration look strong on national security. i don't think it's an accident that you're reading in the paper about efforts by the administration and our allies to use cyber attacks against the

iranian nuclear program as a way to try to head israel off from using military force. i don't know if it happened or not but the details surrounding the cooperation between us and israel and how we engaged in cyber attacks against the iranian nuclear program are chilling and something you should not read about in the paper. the second thing that you read about in the paper was how we disrupted an underwear bomber plot where there was a double agent who had infiltrated an al qaeda cell -- i believe it was in yemen -- and how we were able to break that up and the man was given a suicide vest that was new technology and couldn't be detected by the current screening devices at airports, and how we were able to basically infiltrate that cell. and god knows the damage done to our allies in that operation in the -- mr. mccain: could i ask my friend, isn't it all true that this individual had some 23 family members whose lives were

also placed in danger because of the revelation of his identity? mr. graham: that's what we've been told in the paper. and you've also got a story about the kill list, a blow-by-blow description of how president obama personally oversees who gets killed by drones in pakistan. and at the end of the day, i'm not so sure that's something we should all be reading about. but if that's not enough, what about releasing the pakistani doctor, the person who allegedly helped us find bin laden? his role in this effort to find bin laden is also in the paper and now he's in jail in pakist pakistan. now, the sum total is that the leaks have been devastating, they have put people's lives at risk, they have compromised our national security unlike anything i've seen. and you expect us to sit on the sidelines and let the white house investigate itself? no way.

those who wrote letters in the past suggesting that bush could not impartially investigate himself, where are you today? is this the rule, you can't trust republicans but you can trust democratic administrations to get to the bottom of things that they're involved in up to their eyebrows? do you think it's an accident that all of these books quote senior white house officials? there's a review of one of the books you just mentioned, senator mccain, that talked about the unprecedented access to the national security advisor. there's a vignette in one of the books where the secretary of defense goes up to the national security advisor and suggests a new communication strategy when it comes to the programs we're talking about. "should the eff up." well, that makes great reading, but at the end of the day, should we be reading about all this? people's lives are at stake, programs have been compromised,

our allies are very reluctant now to do business with us. and this was, in my view, an intentional effort by people at the highest level in the white house to leak these stories for political purposes and to accept that eric holder is going to appoint two people within his sphere of influence and call it a day is acceptable is not going to happen. we're going to do everything we can to right this ship. and we're asking no more of you than you ask oed of the bush administration. so to our democratic colleagues, how do you justify this? how do you justify that you couldn't investigate abramoff without a special counsel, you couldn't investigate what scooty libby may or may not have -- scooter libby may or may not have done without a special counsel, but it's okay not to have one here? how do you do senate? mr. durbin: will the senator yield for a question? mr. graham: absolutely. mr. durbin: the senator asks whether this side would like to explain the position. i'd be happy to do it at this

point but i could wait until you've completed your colloquy so it's your choice. mr. graham: whatever you'd like to do, i'm dying to hear how you think it's good government not to have a special independent counsel investigate the most damaging national security leaks in decades. i'm dying to hear your explanation. mr. durbin: you don't have to die. i hope you'll continue to live a good life because you're such a great senator, but i'm asking you do you want notice join in this dialogue or would you rather make your presentation? mr. graham: why don't we let my colleague speak and then you'll have all the time you need. senator chambliss, what do you think? mr. chambliss: well, i'm dying to hear his explanation, too. let me just say that. well, first of all, let me say that i join in with everything my two colleagues have said with respect to the -- number one, the volume of the leaks that have come out in recent weeks. we all know that this town has a tendency to leak information from time to time but never in

the volume and never with the sensitivity that the leaks that we've read about on the front page of newspapers around the country as we have seen in the last few weeks. and, you know, irrespective of where they came from, to have folks who may be implicated in the white house and the white house appointing the two individuals who have been charged with the duty of prosecuting this investigation wreaks of ethical issues. now, i don't know these two u.s. attorneys but everything i know about them is they're dad-gum good prosecutors and they're good lawyers. but why would you even put them in the position of having to investigate, in effect, the individual that appointed them to the position that they're in? that's why we're arguing that a special counsel may be -- is without question the best way to go. and i'm interested to hear my

friend from illinois' response to that issue. let me talk about something else for just a minnesota knit and that is the impact -- for just a minute and that is the impact that these leaks have had on the intelligence community. the number-one thing that individuals who go on the intelligence committees in both the house and the senate are told -- and i know because i've served on both of them, continue to serve on the senate intel committee -- is that, be careful what you say, be careful and make sure that you don't inadvertently and obviously advertently reveal classified information. be sure that in your comments, you never reveal sources and methods. well, guess what? the individuals that were involved in these leaks were very overt in the release of sources and methods with respect to the issues that senator graham referred to as having been leaked.

not only that, but lives were put in danger, particularly the life of the individual who was an asset that worked very closely with respect to the underwear bomber issue. we know that to be a fact. but there's also a secondary issue and that's this -- we have partners around the world that we deal with in the intelligence community every single day and we depend on those partners and they depend on us to provide them with information that we have and likewise that they give to us. and a classic example was detailed in one of these particular leaks on the front page of the "new york times." today, why in the world would any of our partners in the intelligence community around the world, those partners who have men and women on the frontlines who are putting their life in harm's way and in danger every single day to gather intelligence information and

share that information with us, why would they continue to do that if they are now concerned about that information being written about on the front page of newspapers inside the united states and blasted all over television or wherever it may be? the answer is pretty simple. and very honestly, there are some strong considerations being given by some of our partners as to how much information they should share with us, and that't creates a very negative atmosphere within the intelligence world. lastly, let me just say that we dealt in the intelligence committee with our authorization bill recently in which we have tried to address this issue from a punishment standpoint. there are certain things that individuals are required to do when they leave the intelligence community and go write a book.

one of those things is that they have to present their book to an independent panel of intelligence experts and that panel is to review the information and then decide whether or not any of it's classified, should not be released. in in the instance, one of the instances that we have here, one of those individuals never submitted his book to that panel, and in another instance, an individual submitted his book to the panel and the panel said you need to be careful in these areas, and the advice from that panel was pretty well disregarded. one of the provisions in our bill says that if you do that, if you fail to submit your book to that panel, or if you disregard what that panel tells you to do, then you're going to be subject to penalties. part of those penalties include the possible removal of your

right to a pension from the federal government, of the portion that the government is obligated to pay you, not what they have contributed. we are now being criticized in the intelligence community -- or our intelligence bill is being criticized by some individuals out there and guess who it is. it's the media. and it's the white house. what does that tell you about their fear and their participation in the release of classified information? so this -- this issue is of critical importance, and it simply has to stop for any number of national security reasons. but the ones that have been addressed by my colleagues obviously are to be highlighted and i look forward to whatever comments the senator from illinois may have with respect to justifying -- i know he's not going to justify the leaks because i know him too well.

but whatever his justification is for proceeding in a prosecution manner the way the department of justice is going versus what the bush administration did and appoint a special counsel in a case that, by the way, pales in comparison to the leaks that took place in this particular instance. mr. mccain: mr. president, before we turn to my friend from illinois for his i'm sure convincing explanation as to why these -- a special counsel is not required, even though it was in the opinion of his side in previous situations, i want to just again, and the senator from georgia and the senator from south carolina will also corroborate the fact that we have been working and working, meeting after meeting after meeting on the issue of cybersecurity. we believe that we have narrowed it down to three or four differences that could be worked out over time.

among them are liability, another one is information sharing. but i think it's also important for us to recognize in this debate the people who are most directly affected in many respects is the business community. and it's important that we have the input and the -- satisfy at least to a significant degree, those concerns. there are those who allege that a piece of legislation is better than no legislation. i've been around this town for a long time. i've seen bad legislation which is far worse than no legislation. so we understand, certainly i and members of the armed services committee and others, understand the importance of this issue. we also understand that those who are directly affected by it, those concerns need to be satisfied as well, and i commit to my colleagues to continue nonstop rounds of meetings and discussions to try to get this

issue resolved. to this moment, there is still significant differences, and i say to my friend from illinois, i look forward to hearing his convincing discussion. thank you. i yield. go ahead. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the senator from illinois be involved in the colloquy. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i didn't know if you wanted to make the consent request you came to the floor to payingic make. you're not going to make it? mr. mccain: you will object. mr. durbin: yes, i will. i want to thank my colleague from arizona. occasionally, historically on the floor of the senate there's a debate, and this may be one of those moments. i hope it is because it is a worthy topic. let's get down to the bottom line here. i've served on the intelligence committee as some of my colleagues have. we know the important work done

by the intelligence community to keep america safe. they literally risk their lives every day for us, and they're largely invisible. we don't see them at the military parades and other places where we acknowledge those warriors who risk their lives. but these men and women do it in so many different ways, and when i spent four years on the senate intelligence committee as my colleagues, i'm sure, people the same, i went out of my way to make sure that i was careful with classified information. so as to continue to protect this country and never endanger those who were helping us keep it safe all around the world. so the obvious question raised by the republican side of the aisle is whether this president, president barack obama, thinks differently, whether obama believes we should cut corners and not be so careful when it comes to the leaking of classified information. and my answer to that is looking at the record. look at the record and ask this basic question: when it comes to

prosecuting those believed to have been guilty of leaks of classified information, which president of the united states has prosecuted more suspected individuals than any other president, democrat or republican? barack obama. on six different occasions, five in the department of justice, one in the department of defense, they pursued the active prosecution of those they felt were guilty of leaking classified information that might endanger the united states. let me add another personal observation. it was last year when my friend, bill daily, then chief of staff to president obama, came to chicago for a luncheon. it was a nice day. we had a nice luncheon. it was very successful. he said he had to get back to washington, he was in a big hurry, never said why. he told me later, after, he told me much later, after this occurred. i had to get back because we had a classified meeting about

hunting down obviously. we -- osama bin laden. we were sworn to secrecy at every level of government so we never disclosed information that we were even thinking about that possibility. bill daly took it seriously, the president takes it seriously, anyone in those positions of power will take it seriously. to suggest otherwise on the floor of the senate is just plain wrong and it raises a question about this president's commitment to the nation which i think is improper and cannot be backed up with the evidence. now, let's look at the evidence. when it comes to the appointment of a special prosecutor, let me take you back to those moments when a special prosecutor named patrick fitzgerald from the northern district of illinois was chosen to investigate the leak of classified information. let me put it in historical context. we had invaded iraq. we did it based on assertions by the bush-cheney administrations about the danger to the united

states. one of those assertions dealt with africa, and certain yellow cake chemicals that might be used for nuclear weapons and whether they were going to fall into the hands of the iraqi leadership. it was one of the arguments -- there were many, weapons of mass destruction and so forth -- that turned out to be totally paul: , leading us into -- false, leading us into a war, which 'cause cost us dearly in terms of human lives and our own treasure. so one person spoke out. former ambassador joe wilson who identified himself as a republican said i don't believe there is any evidence. he was punished. remember how he was punished? when someone decided to out his wife, valerie plame. valerie plame had served as an intelligence agent for the united states to protect our nation, and someone decided

that in order to get even with joe wilson, they would disclose the fact that his wife worked in the intelligence agencies. and then what happened? if you'll remember, when that story broke broke, the intelligence community of the united states of america said we have been betrayed. if one of our own can be outed in a political debate in washington, are any of us safe? so -- it's a legitimate question. so there was an obvious need to find out who did it. who disclosed her identity. endangering her life, the life of every person who had worked with her and so many other intelligence agents. mr. president, do you ferl what happened? i do. the attorney general of the united states, john ashcroft, recused himself from this investigation. it was the right thing for him to do because the questions about this disclosure of her identity went to the top of the administration. he recused himself and appointed

patrick fitzgerald. the u.s. attorney for the northern district of illinois, a professional -- a professional prosecutor with the u.s. department of justice. well, the investigation went on for a long time. at the end of the investigation, the chief of staff of the vice president of the united states was found to have violated law. that came out and eventually we learned the identity of who actually disclosed the name of valerie plame. it was a serious issue, one that called for a special counsel, and if i remember correctly, there were even republicans at that point joining democrats saying let's get to the bottom of this. if this goes all the way to the top, let's find out who's responsible for it. it was the appropriate thing to do. now look at this situation. this president, who has activated the prosecution of six individuals suspected of leaking classified information, takes very seriously the information

that was disclosed related to the al qaeda techniques and all the things that they they were g to threaten the united states. and what has he done as a result of snippet let's be specific because i really have to call in question some of the statements made on the floor here. to say that the administration is covering this up as to this leak is just plain wrong. at this point, the department of justice has appointed two highly respected around experienced prosecutors with proven records of independence in the exercise of their duties. u.s. attorney manchinen has -- matschen has overseen a number of prosecutions in the district of columbia. u.s. attorney rosensteinstein has overseen a number of national security investigations including one of the five leak investigations that have been prosecuted under this president. the justice department has

complete confidence in their abilities to conduct thorough and independent investigations into these matters in close collaboration with career prosecution -- prosecution and agents. this is not being swept under the rug, ignored. this is being taken seriously by this administration as every leak of classified information will be taken seriously. i know it's an election year. we're fewer than 100 days away from the election and i know the floor of the senate is used by both parties this close to the election but i want make it clear this president has a record of commitment to protecting the men and women who gather intelligence for america. he has a record of prosecuting more suspects for leaks of this information than any other president in history. he has, through his attorney general, appointed two career criminal prosecutors to look into this case and said they will have the resources and authority they need to get to the bottom of it.

s that that is the way to do. will the day come when a special counsel is needed? up won't rule that out. but it is wrong to come to the floor and question this president's commitment to the intelligence community, it is wrong to question the credentials of these two men who have performed so well in service of the department of justice in years gone by. i thought senator mccain was going to make a unanimous consent request and if he wishes to, let me yield at this point. mr. mccain: i'd be glad to respond to my friend. obviously he's in disagreement with the chairperson of the intelligence committee because she said that these leaks were the worst in 11 years that she has been a member of the senate intelligence committee. so obviously the abramoff and the other valerie plame investigations aren't nearly as serious. and they certainly weren't when you look at the -- at the incredible damage, according to

admiral mcgraifn -- mccraven, of the incredible damage that these leaks have caused. again, the chairperson of the intelligence committee said it's the worst that she's ever seen. admiral mccraven, says it put lives at risk and may ultimately cost americans their lives. i wonder if my colleague from illinois is concerned when according to his book mr. sanger said -- quote -- "a senior official in the national security council tapped him on the shoulder and brought him to the presidential suite in the pittsburgh hotel where president obama was staying" -- i'm quoting from mr. sanger's book -- "most of the national security staff was present. where the journalist was apparently allowed to review satellite images and other evidence that confirmed the

existence of a secret nuclear site in iran." when leaks take place around this town, the first question you have to ask, who benefits? who benefits from them? obviously someone who wants to take a journalist up to the presidential suite would make it pretty easy for us who we should interview first. who had the key to the presidential suite? who uses the presidential suite in a hotel in pittsburgh? these leaks are the most damaging that have taken place in my time in the united states senate and before that in the united states military. yes, six people have been prosecuted. do you know at what level? a private. the lowest level people have been prosecuted by this administration, and this administration says that they have to interview hundreds of people in the bottom-up process.

and i can guarantee you one thing, i'll tell the senator from illinois now, there will not be any definitive conclusion , this investigation before the election in november. mr. durbin: will the senator yield for a question? mr. mccain: that doesn't mean to me that they are doing their job. although it is clear that one of these prosecutors was active in the obama campaign, was a contributor to the obama campaign. i'm not saying that individual isn't of the highest caliber. i am saying that that would lead people to ask a reasonable question, and that is whether that individual is entirely objective. americans need an objective investigation by someone that they can trust just as senator -- then-senator biden and then-senator obama asked for in these previous incidents which, in my view, were far less serious and in the view of the chairperson of the intelligence committee far more severe than

those that were previously investigated. i would be glad to have my colleague respond to that. mr. durbin: i would like to respond. first, let me tell you, whatever the rank of the individual, private, specialist, chief petty officer, if they're responsible for leaking classified information, they need to be investigated and prosecuted if guilty, if we assume that they're guilty. so the fact that a private is being investigated shouldn't get them off the hook. i would just say -- mr. mccain: i don't think it gets them off the hook. i do think it has some significance that as compared to this kind of -- of egregious breach of security that's taking place at the highest level. we know that. mr. durbin: i would say to my friend from arizona, if i am not mistaken, it was a noncommissioned officer at best and maybe not an officer in the army who is being prosecuted for the wikileaks, so let's not say that the rank of anyone being prosecuted in any way makes them guilty or innocent. we need to go to the source of

the leak. mr. mccain: but my friend would obviously acknowledge if it's a private or a corporal or something, it has not nearly the gravity that it does when a person of -- with whom the nation has played the much higher responsibilities commits this kind of breach. mr. durbin: of course, it should be taken to where it leads, period. but let me also ask, i don't know if quoting from a book on the floor if what was written in that book is necessarily true. perhaps the senator has his own independent information on that. mr. mccain: no one has challenged mr. sanger's depiction. no one in the government -- in the administration has challenged his assertion that he was taken by a -- quote -- "high-ranking senior official in the national security council to the presidential suite. no one challenged that. mr. durbin: i would say to the senator i don't know if that has to do with the information that was ultimately leaked about al qaeda. it seems like it is a separate matter, but it should be taken

seriously, period. what more does this president need to do to convince you other than to have more prosecutions than any president in history of those who have been believed to have leaked classified information? if you will come to the floor, as you said earlier, and i quote -- the investigation is -- quote -- supposedly going on, close quote. i trust the administration that the investigation is going on. what evidence do you have that it's not going on? mr. mccain: i say to my friend, it's not a matter of trust. it's a matter of credibility, because if an administration has the same argument that then-senator biden used and senator obama used in opposition to the administration investigating the abramoff case and the valerie plame case, they argued that it's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of credibility with the american people whether an administration can actually investigate itself or should this be a credible

outside counsel who would conduct this investigation which would then have the necessary credibility, i think, with the american people, and i think that's -- there is a certain logic to that. i hope my colleague would admit. mr. durbin: let me say to the senator here that in that case, the attorney general of the united states, john ashcroft, recused himself, recused himself. he said there was such an appearance of a conflict if not a conflict, he was stepping aside. it's very clear under those circumstances that special counsel is needed. in this case, there is no suggestion the president, the vice president, the attorney general were complicit in any leak, so to suggest otherwise, i have to say to senator mccain show me what you're bringing as proof. mr. mccain: i am bringing you proof that this attorney general has a significant credibility problem, and that problem is bred by a program called fast and furious where weapons --

where under a program sponsored by the justice department used -- let me just finish what i'm saying, then i will be glad to respond. let me just finish my comment. and a young american, border patrol agent, was murdered with weapons that were -- that were part of the fast and furious investigation. what has the attorney general of the united states done? he has said he will not come forward with any information that is requested by my colleagues in the house, so i would have to tell you, at least in the house of representatives and with many americans and certainly the family of brian terry who was murdered, there is a credibility problem with this attorney general of the united states. mr. durbin: i say to my colleague and friend, senator mccain, i deeply regret the loss of any american life, particularly those in service of our country, and i feel exactly -- mr. mccain: i am convinced of that. mr. durbin: exactly about this individual and the loss to his family, but let's make sure the record is complete. the fast and furious program was

not initiated by president obama. it was started by president george w. bush. mr. mccain: which in my view does not impact the need for a full and complete investigation. mr. durbin: secondly, this attorney general, mr. holder, has been brought before a congressional committee time after time. i have been in the senate judiciary committee when he has been questioned at length about fast and furious, and i'm sure he has been called even more frequently before the house committees. third, he's produced over 9,000 pages of documents and chairman issa has said not enough, we need more. well, at some point it becomes clear he will never produce enough documents. and the house decided to find him in contempt for that. that's their decision. i don't think that was necessarily proper. but having said that, does that mean that every decision from the department of justice from this point forward cannot be trusted? mr. mccain: no, but what i am saying is that there is a significant credibility problem that the attorney general of the united states has at least with

the majority of the house of representatives. mr. durbin: the republican majority. mr. mccain: on this issue, which then lends, i think, more weight to the argument that as there was in the case of valerie plame and jack abramoff for the need for a special counsel. mr. durbin: i don't see the connection. if the attorney general and the president said we're not going to investigate this matter, senator mccain, i would be standing right next to you on the floor calling for a special counsel, but they have said just the opposite. they have initiated the investigation and brought in two career criminal prosecutors whom we have trusted to take public corruption cases in the district of columbia and leaks of classified information in other cases, and he said now you have the authority, conduct the investigation. they're not ignoring this. mr. mccain: those two counsels report to who? the attorney general of the united states. mr. durbin: ultimately report to the people. mr. mccain: i would think just for purposes of credibility and with the american people, that a special counsel would be called

for by almost everyone. look, i -- i understand the senator from illinois' position. we have our colleagues waiting. i appreciate the fact that he is willing to discuss this issue. i think we pretty well exhausted it, but -- mr. durbin: may i touch on one other issue you raised if you have a moment? mr. mccain: sure. mr. durbin: the pending bill, cybersecurity. this is a bill which i hope we both agree addresses an issue of great serious and gravity in terms of measure's defense. i know the senator from arizona and some of his colleagues have produced an alternative. i support the bipartisan bills that senators lieberman and collins have brought to the floor. the major group that opposes the passage of the cybersecurity bill is the u.s. chamber of commerce, an organization which represents the largest businesses in america, and what i have heard the senator from arizona say over and over again is that they have got to be an important part of this conversation and the discussion. i think senator lieberman and

senator collins would say we've engaged them, we have listened to them, we have made changes consistent with what they were looking for, but clearly they have not reached the point where they are satisfied. i learned yesterday when senator whitehouse of rhode island came to the floor that in fact the u.s. chamber of commerce really turns out to be pretty expert on this issue of cybersecurity, and i call the attention of the senator from arizona, if he's not aware of it, to a "wall street journal" article of december 21, 2011. this "wall street journal" article is entitled china hackers hit u.s. chamber, and it starts by saying a group of hackers in china breached the computer defenses of america's top business lobbying group, gaining access to everything stored on its system, including information about its 3 million members, according to people familiar. the complex operation involved at least 300 internet addresses, four chamber employees who worked on asian policy had six weeks of their email stolen.

the article goes on to say that the chamber of commerce didn't notice this breach that went on for six months. the federal bureau of investigation brought it to their attention, and then they learned that the chinese had not only hacked into the computer main frame, they had somehow hacked into the computer-driven thermostats in their office and at times in the office of the u.s. chamber of commerce, their copy machines and fax machines were spitting out pages with chinese characters on them. they were completely compromised by this cyber attack. now they come to us as experts on how to avoid a cyber attack. mr. mccain: first of all, let me say to my friend, that's just unfair. they are not claiming to be experts on cyber attacks. they are claiming that there are issues of liability, issues of information sharing and other issues that they believe will inhibit their ability to engage in business practices and grow

and prosper. so to say that somehow they claim they are experts on cybersecurity, they are not, but they are experts on how their businesses can best cooperate, share information, resist these attacks and come together with other people and other interests to bring about some legislation we can all agree on, and there are three million businesses and organizations that are represented here, i'd say to my colleague, so it seems to me that we should continue this conversation with them, particularly on issues of information and liability, but to somehow say well, we talked to them but we didn't agree with anything they wanted to do is not fair to those three million businesses. we are making some progress, but please don't say that they portray themselves as experts. by the way, they hacked into my presidential campaign, which shows they really were pretty bored and didn't have a hell of

a lot to do. but anyway, please go ahead, please go ahead. mr. durbin: i'm sure that wasn't the case. i'm sure it was a fascinating treasure-trove of great insights and information. but let me just say to my friend from arizona, i'm asking only for a little humility on both sides, both in the public sector and the private sector, by first acknowledging as our security advisors tell us this is one of the most serious threats to our country and its future, and we should be joining with some humility, particularly if you have been victimized, whether in your campaign or in their offices, to understand how far this has gone. the f.b.i. -- this is according to senator whitehouse, came to the floor, found 50 different american businesses that have been compromised and hacked into by the same type of operation, 48 were totally unaware of it. they didn't even know it occurred. what we're trying to do is to get these businesses to cooperate with us so that we share information and keep one another safe.

intend of the day, it's not just about the safety of the business, and i think it's important they be safe, but the safety of the american people. this is really a serious issue. mr. mccain: well, could i say to my colleague, first of all, to somehow infer that businesses in america are less interested in national security than they are in their own businesses is not, i think, a fair inference, but let me also say that what they want to do is be more efficient in the way they can do business. for example, information sharing. as you know, there is a serious problem with liability if they are not given some kind of protections in the information sharing they would do with each other and with the federal government, so we want to make sure that they have that security so that they will more cooperatively engage in the kind of information we need. that's a vital issue. that is still something we have a disagreement on.

i have no doubt that the senator from illinois' comments about how important this issue is is true, but we have got to -- no one argues with that, but we have got to get it right rather than get it wrong. the senator from illinois and i have been around here a long, long time and sometimes we have found out that we have passed legislation that has had adverse consequences rather than the consequences we con female plated. by the way, i would throw dodd-frank in there, no company is too big to fail now. i would throw in some of the other legislation we have passed recent which have not achieved the goals we sought. that is why we need in my view more compromise and more agreement, and i believe that we can reach it. and i give great credit to both of our cosponsors of the bill. but please don't allege that this is -- quote -- "bipartisan in any significant way.

most of the republican senators oppose the legislation in its present form. most republican senators, all republican senators, understand the gravity of this situation and the necessity of acting. please. mr. durbin: i'd say to my friend from arizona i hope we get get this done this week. i know it's a big lift and a lot to do but i believe that the threat is imminent. and i believe it's continuous. and if we don't find a way through our political differences to make this country safer, shame on us. i do believe senator collins is from your side of the aisle and is proud of that fact so it is a bipartisan effort. and she has worked with senator lieberman on so many issues. mr. mccain: i accept your definition of bipartisan. mr. durbin: to raise the question of dodd-frank and appropriate government oversight and regulation, i suggest you reflect on three things --

libor, peregrine investments and the chase loss of $6 billion to say that we shouldn't have government oversight of our financial institutions that dragged us into this recession we're still trying to recover from, i would say it differently. we vote differently when it comes to that. but i think there is a continuing need for government oversight of these institutions. mr. mccain: these institutions are not averse to government oversight. they are averse to legislation which harms their ability to share that information because if they face the threat of being taken into court for that, then obviously that -- there is some reluctance. they also know how much has been lost because of the lack of cybersecurity to china and other countries. they're the ones the most directly affected. so they are intelligent people. they are smart people, and they want this legislation to pass in

a way that is the most effective way to enact legislation on this very serious issue. i look forward to continuing the conversation with my friend from illinois and i think that both of us learn a bit from our conversations, and i thank him for his continued willingness to discuss the issues. mr. durbin: i thank my friend, the senator from illinois, and i hope other colleagues will e* engage in this kind of this exchange. i don't know if we convinced one another but i hope those who have heard the debate learned a little more about the debate in the process. mr. mccain: we yield the floor. mr. durbin: i ask that the senate proceed to senate concurrent resolution 55 submitted earlier today by senator harkin. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate concurrent resolution 55 directing the clerk of the house of representatives to make a correction in the enrollment of

h.r. 1627. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. durbin: i ask the concurrent resolution be agreed to, and any statements related to the measure be printed at the appropriate place in the record as if read. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. blumenthal: mr. president, i am both honored and grateful to follow that very enlightening and energetic exchange between two of the most able and respected members of this body on a range of issues, one of them i want to address now and i want to particularly thank the presiding officer for his contribution, my distinguished friend from minnesota who has really addressed so constructively some of the privacy concerns in various proposals and an amendment i

have joined, and his work on that issue i think really is reflective of the approach that has been brought to this issue of cybersecurity. and an issue that this entire body in my view has an opportunity, a historic opportunity and also a historic obligation to address this week, deal with it now, and authoritatively and effectively in a way that the nation expects us to do. i want to thank not only the presiding officer but a bipartisan group of colleagues, beginning with senators lieberman, collins, rockefeller, feinstein, and carper, who deserve our appreciation for drafting this bill and bringing it to the floor. and a number of other colleagues, including along with the presiding officer, senators whitehouse, mikulski, coons, coats, blunt, akaka,

and kyl. and i mention this number because i think it is an important fact about the process that has brought us to this point, it really reflects the kind of collegial approach that is so important to this legislation. and this legislation has undergone very significant and substantial revisions to reflect suggestions made by myself, our colleagues. this bill will give the government and the private sector an opportunity to collaborate and share information so that they can confront the ongoing present, urgent cyber threat directly and immediately. this bill is not a topdown approach. it is voluntary in its direction to the private sector. what it says to critical

industries, industries that are critical to our infrastructure, is you determine what the best practices are, you tell us what the standards should be, and then those standards will be shared throughout the industry, and overseen by a council that the departments of commerce and justice and defense and homeland security will be involved in implementing and if companies comply with those standards, voluntary standards, they receive benefits that will enlist them in the program. benefits that will form incentives in the form of limited immunity in the event of an attack and if companies decline to comply, if they are not provided with sufficient incentives in their judgment, there is no come pulse, no legal mandate that they need to do so. to use an often-overused

imagery, what we are talking about here is a carrot, not a stick in solving one of the most pressing and threatening challenges our country faces today. it is the challenge of this moment, the challenge of our time. i have been in briefings as has the presiding officer and other members of this body, with members of the intelligence community and others who have in stark and staggering terms presented to us the potential consequences of failing to act. just last week, general keith alexander, the chief of the united states cyber command and director of the national security agency, said that intrusions on our essential infrastructure have increased

17-fold. let me repeat that. 17-fold between the years 2009 and 2011. and that it's only a matter of time before physical damage will result. and he has -- and i'm going to quote him -- said that "the loss of intellectual property, putting aside the physical threat, taking only the economic damage, is -- quote --"the greatest transfer of wealth in history." we are permitting with immunity -- impunity, the greatest transfer of wealth in history from the united states of america to add ver seardz -- adversaries abrought, to companies overseas when when at a time when every member of this body says our priority should be jobs and protecting the economy of this country. it is an economic issue, not just a national security issue. in fact, cybersecurity is

national security. and the united states is under attack literally every day. general alexander described 200 attacks on critical infrastructure within the past year, alluded to them, without describing them in detail, and on a scale of 1-10, he said our preparedness for large-scale cyber attack, shutting down the stock exchange, a blackout on the scale comparable to the one seen in india in the past few days, our preparedness is around a three on a scale of 1-10. that situation is unacceptable. we are in a certain way, in a period of time now comparable to 1993. after the first world trade

center bombing. remember, 1993, world trade center, 1336 pounds placed in a critical area of the world trade center, killing six people, injuring a thousand. but fortunately at that point failing to bring down the building, which was the objective. that first bombing was a warning as well as a tragedy. america, even more tragically, disregarded that warning in failing to act. and we are in that period now comparable to 1993 to 9/11 when the country could have acted and neglected to do so. we cannot repeat that failure

now. we cannot disregard the day-to-day attacks, the serious intrusions that are stealing our wealth and endangering our security, our critical grid, transportation, water treatment, electricity, financial. the scale of damage that could be done is horrific, comparable to what 9/11 did. and we have an obligation to act before that kind of damage is faced in reality by the country. we have been adequately and eloquently warned, on the floor of this body, in private briefings available to members of this body, in the public press to some extent. one of the frustrations i think many of us feel is that we cannot share some of the

classified briefings that we've received, which would depict in even more graphic and dramatic terms what this nation faces. some of these attacks are launched by foreign governments who seek to do us harm. some are launched by domestic criminals who simply want to steal money. some are sophisticated, some are very crude. former deputy secretary william lynch has detailed one attack, just one attack, in which a foreign computer hacker or group of them stole 24,000 united states military files in march of 2011. as others have noted on the floor as recently as just a few minutes ago, in late 2011, the computers of the united states chamber of commerce were completely compromised for more than a year by hackers. and yet today the chamber of

commerce has essentially opposed this voluntary standards-based plan to help secure our nation against attack. in fact, how extraordinary that certain parts of this bill have actually combined a consensus among the business community, the privacy advocates -- advocates, as well as public officials, the national security agency. that consensus on privacy again reflects a profound and extraordinary feature of this bill, which is that we are coming together as a nation to face a common problem in a way that is demanded by the times and the threats that we face. sean henry, the executive assistant director of the f.b.i., has said that the cyber threat is an existential one and

i'm going to quote him. "the cyber threat is an existential one" meaning that a major cyber attack could potentially wipe out whole companies. that's the reason that the business community has been involved and should support these proposals. and these attacks are not only ongoing, they've been occurring for years. criminals infiltrating our communications, accessing our secrets, sapping our economic health through thefts of intellectual property. and finally, secretary of defense leon panetta, has been frequently quoted, has said -- quote -- "the next pearl harbor we confront could very well be a power attack that cripples our power system, our grid, our financial systems, our government systems." the panoply of harm is

staggering. and we cannot wait for that harm to be a reality to this country. the consequences comparable to 9/11 are tragic to contemplate. f.b.i. director mueller has said the cyber threat which cuts across all programs will be number-one threat to our country. f.b.i. director mueller speaks the truth. we must make sure that our government has the tools and authority as they have asked us, the n.s.a., the department of defense, the department of homeland security, our business community, privacy advocates, all unite in feeling that this threat must be confronted. we have the opportunity but we

also have a historic obligation to make sure that we move this bill and that it moves forward so that we do not squander this opportunity. i thank the president, and i yield the floor mr. cardin: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. cardin: i ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to katherine beamer, department of state detailee in my office during that i had's session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cardin: mr. president, if i might, willest me first thank katherine beamer for her service to the senate and to the american people. she's been an incredibly valuable part of my staff, detailed by the department of state to my senate office. she's helped me deal with preparations for my responsibility as the presiding officer knows on the senate foreign relations committee, as

we deal with the confirmation of ambassadors so that i can be adequately prepared in dealing with the many foreign visitors who come to our office who deal with foreign policy issues. i particularly want to thank her for her help in the so-called manifski bill, a critical part of our team in developing the necessary support so that bill could move forward. i want to thank her for her help on the cardin-lugar provisions that provide transparency among mineral companies so we can trace the resources of developing countries, so the resources cannot be a curse but can be a benefit for the strength of a country's economy. and i want to thank her on a lot of human rights issues that she's been involved with,

including the issue of alan gross. senator durbin has spoken on the floor and has brought to our attention the human rights violations of a marylander who is today in a prison in cuba. alan gross was providing help to a small jewish community in cuba. he wasn't doing it in any secret manner. he was trying to provide them a better opportunity to communicate with the internet. he was very open about what he was doing in cuba, and he was doing it in order to advance the ability of a community to keep in touch around the world. as a result of that activity, alan gross, a marylander, was imprisoned, he was arrested, he was tried and convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison. his appeal to the cuban supreme

court was denied in august of 2011. and for the past two and a half years, since december 3, 2009, alan gross has been imprisoned in cuba. over two and a half years. mr. president, throughout my legislative career, i've worked hard to try to improve the relationship between cuba and the united states, particularly among the people of cuba and the people of the united states. i've worked on ways that we can ease up certain restrictions so that we can improve the climate between our two countries. but what the cuba government is doing today in continuing to imprison alan gross is absolutely outrageous, it violates international human rights standards, it is against any sense of humanity, and i am going to continue to speak out

about it and urge the cuban authorities to do what is right. it has gained international attention. there's been efforts made by other dignitaries from other countries to try to get alan gross' case heard in the proper manner. i particularly want to acknowledge senator durbin's extraordinary leadership on this issue. senator durbin took the time when he was in cuba to meet with alan gross. i have been with senator durbin, where we have met with alan gross' family. i have been with senator durbin when we have tried to engage other international diplomats to implore upon the cuban authorities on a humanitarian basis to release alan gross. i must tell you, there was no reason for his arrest, there was to reason for his conviction, there was no reason for him

being in prison today. but we don't really have to get too much moved that issue -- too much involved in that issue to suggest to the cuban authorities to release alan gross on a humanitarian basis. he's lost over 100 pounds, suffers from a multitude of medical conditions including gout, ulcers and arthritis that have worsened without adequate treatment. of equal concern of his own health or the conditions of his beloved mother and daughter, both of whom are suffering from cancer. the gross family should not have to suffer through another day of this dedesperate situation -- desperate situation without alan at home for support. so for all those reasons, we speak out today to once again urge the cuban authorities, do the right thing as far as human rights and your legal system and

release alan gross. do the right thing from the humanitarian point of view and let alan gross come home to his beloved family so he can be supportive to them during this difficult time in their lives. do the right thing so that we can have a better relationship between the people of cuba and the the people of the united states. do it because it is the right thing to do. we're going to continue to speak out about this. i know that many of us have looked for different ways in which we can help the gross family, and we'll continue to do that. but the simple, right thing cuban authorities should release alan gross today. and we urge them to do that. with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from west virginia is recognized. mr. manchin: are we in morning business, sir? i ask to speak as if in morning business up to 12 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. manchin: i rise today to announce a rare opportunity for the people of my great state of west virginia who care so much about the future of our country. when i travel all around my beautiful state of west virginia, one of the biggest concerns i hear from the people is simply that our nation's finances are in such bad shape that we could be the first generation that leaves this country and leaves our next generation in worse shape than

we received it. i am determined to make sure that doesn't happen, and inlay sure you are -- and i'm sure you are too, sir. i am determined to put this country back on the right path. i'm also determined that all of our children and grandchildren will be able to live a more fulfilling and prosperous life than we d we're running out of easy options to put our country's financial house in order and every day that we delay a big fix, the price will be higher. the changes will be more painful and the choices will be more stark. with our country's finances so far out of control, all of the priorities that all of us care about -- whether it is creating jobs, maintaining the best military in the world, keeping the core of vital programs like social security, or educating the next generation -- all of those priorities are in jeopardy. if you care about rebuilding america, investing in our highways and road, our airports, our water, our sewer systems, you can't do it if you don't pay for it. if you care about creating jobs

and giving our businesses certainty, you can't do that either if you can't pay for it. and if you care about educating the next generation, preparing this generation with the skill sets that they need for the jobs of today and tomorrow morning you can't do it if you can't pay for it. if you care about having an energy policy uses all of our domestic resources in the cleanest possible manner, if you care about developing technology for clean coal, if you care about ending our dependence on foreign ail from hostile countries, you can't do it if you can't pay for it. if you care about having the best military in the world, one that can defend the liberty of this nation and where needed abroad, you can't do it if you can't pay for it. if you care about helping the vulnerable, the sick, the weak, keeping our vital core promises like social security, medicare, medicaid, and head start, you simply can't do it if you can't pay for it.

any nation that wants to be a strong nation, that wants to invest in its priorities, that wants to leave the country in better shape for the next generation, cannot be shackled by crippling debt. and if the federal government can't get its financial house in order, the hard truth is that all of these priorities that i've just spoke about will be slashed sooner than any of us would like to admit. whether you consider yourself a democrat or republican or an independent, or you have no affiliation at all, whether you consider yourself a liberal, a conservatives 0er a centrist, whenever you fall on the spectrum, none of the priorities that care about on awful those sides -- on all of those sides can happen unless we can pay pour if. the old saying is as true today as ever. you can't help others if you're not strong enough to help yourself. and it's time to make america strong again, mr. president. let me give you some troubling if i cans that illustrate how bad it's gotten. the debt hole that we have dug

for ourselves now equals the entire amount of the goods this country produces, our gross domestic product. that hasn't happened since 1947. think of the next group of lawmakers, just think of the next group of lawmakers that will be sitting where you and i sit, sir, in 2033, which is just around the corner. they are going to have to look americans in the uand tell them that the social security check they're receiving will only be 75% of what it owed to them. they'll have to say it's because the group that came before me didn't do their job. think of ten years from now -- really, truly around the corner -- when every man, woman, and child in this country would owe more than $79,000 -- $79,000 -- to pay off our national debt. right now, today, it is about $50,7, a which is way too high. but it's only going to get worse if we don't do our job and fix

it. there are three million jobs today going unfulfilled in this country because they say that the workforce doesn't have the right skills in order to perform those jobs. and our unemployment rate has been the highest for the longe longerest period of time. that's unacceptable. so who exactly is supposed to pay for all of this debt? if you do the math, the picture isn't pretty. we're not balancing our budget. we're not training people for the jobs of the future, and we're leaving our children and grandchildren a massive debt that, as of today, equals the entire economic production of this great nation. to me, however, you do the math, even if you use funny washington accounting tricks, this situation adds up to a train wreck, at best. i'm determined to prevent this oncoming train wreck, and i will do all that i can working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. i said, people back home didn't

send me here to washington to put the next generation into more debt. they sent me here to hopefully help get them out of debt. putting this country back on the right path will hurt, but we have to be willing to come together across party lines. we have to determine our highest priorities and make tough choices. that's what people of west virginia sent me here to do. not cater to any special interest group. there are plenty of politicians who will talk about fixing the problem, pay lip service, who will talk a good game, talk what we call talk the talk but can't walk the walk. the problem will continue to fester if we don't do something. i'm not one of the politicians who can turn a blind eye to our debt and walk away from it. the people of west virginia expect more. they expect me to make hard choices and work with both democrats and republicans to do the right thing for our state, no matter how hard it will be to fix our problems, and it's clear that everyone will need to have a little skin in the game and

share these sacrifices. and i am determined to do it. but no senator, no matter how committed they may be, can do it alone. that is why i'm pleased, really so pleased, to announce that two of the nation's greatest financial leaders will be coming to west virginia to hold an open forum with the people of our state about the future of our finances. and we call that "our finances and our future." former senator allen simpson, a republican from wyoming, and mr. erskine boal, a democrat, who is -- erskine bowles, a democrat, who was the former white house chief of staff under president clinton. two of the toughest and smartest people in this country when it comes to our finances. since i've been here, the most bipartisan effort to fix our finances stay in has been led by erskine expwoalz ala bowles and. they were asked to head up the president's national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. it was bipartisan when it began. it stayed bipartisan all this time and it has grown with a number of senators from both

sides of the aisle who understand that we need a big fix that comes from both sides of the aisle in a bipartisan way. bowles and simpson paint a grim picture about the problem we're facing. and in december of 2010, they laid out a serious blueprint for a solution, one that isn't perfect but that has earned more support from members of both parties than anything else that has been proposed in washington. since then, too many of our leaders have put their heads in the sand about this proposal and the choices we face. but west virginia is different from most states. we welcome the hard truth because we know we have to face the truth. and believe me, we can handle the truth in west virginia. on september the 10th, west virginians will have an opportunity to hear some truth telling. i'm so proud that alan simpson and erskine bowles will hold a forum, our finances and our future, a bipartisan conversation about the facts, at our magnificent cultural center. they will present the facts, and there's no doubt that the facts

are dire, and lay out the magnitude of the problem that we face. and then we'll talk about solutions. and it's a rare opportunity to have a frank, bipartisan conversation about the grave conditions of our nation's finances. so i'm inviting all west virginians, the business, labor, senior groups, the young people who will be paying off our debt -- or expected to pay it off -- and anyone else with an interest in our future to come and participate in this session. we'll talk about what this framework would do, which is to find the balance between revenue and spending, fundamentally changing our tax code and cutting spending. in short, it will make our system more fair. let's look first at the tax co code. there are some americans, because of their connections and ability to hire lobbyists, have manipulated our tax code so that they get special tax breaks. that's not right. too many corporations that depend on the strength of this great nation, as has been noted, like g.e., are paying nothing or virtually nothing in taxes.

that's wrong and that's not right. we need to make our tax system more fair and straightforward. the bipartisan bowles-simple sop plan would end many of those loop -- boal-simpson plan would end many of those loopholes and bring fairness to everyone. right now in this country, we spend so much more than we can afford. i know so many americans who would be willing to -- to pay more taxes -- they tell me, i'd be more than happy to pay, and they believe if we were using it in the right direction. to pay down our debt and to invest in infrastructure. but we're not spending well, and i've always said that public servants can do one or two things with public tax money. we can either spend it or invest it. and, frankly, we've been doing too much spending and not enough investing. our annual deficit, the amount we spend versus the amount we take in, is about $1.2 trillion this year alone. looking into the future, if nothing changes, we'll have deficits every year for the next

ten years. the next decade. no one can tell me that we can sustain that pace and still afford social security, medicare, medicaid, defending this nation and educating our children. the math doesn't add up. the bipartisan bowles-simpson framework addresses this by cutting more than $2 trillion for our spending over the next decade. and after we address our spending and our tax code, guess what happens? our interest payments, the amount we're spending every year, just for the privilege of borrowing money from countries like china to finance our day-to-day operations, will go down nearly $700 billion over the next ten years. that's the bipartisan bowles-simpson framework and, yes, it will have some painful cuts. and, yes, everyone will have to share in the sacrifice. but because the pain is spread out, no one takes too deep a h hit. and that is why i believe this proposed blueprint is the only plan that has garnered any real show of bipartisan interest from the beginning of its inception

to today. mr. president, when i became governor of the great state of west virginia, our state finances were in a tough place. we had to make very hard choices about our priorities. and not everyone was happy with those decisions. seven or eight years ago, people believed that west virginia was hopeless, that we would always be challenged, that our finances would always be on the brink, that we wouldn't be able to invest in our priorities, that our economy would always be stagnant, that our credit ratings would always be miserably low, that we wouldn't be able to turn any of that around. but i tell you what, at the end of my term, we had lowered tax rates, reduced our food tax, ended our fiscal years with a budget surplus each and every year, and increased our credit rating three times in three years during the greatest recession. because we put -- we put our priorities based on our values of what was important to west virginia. together we weathered the recession better than 45 states. we're finally getting the last piece of our puzzle in place with a fix to the retirement

system. so i can tell you this -- i'm not talking about fixing our nation's finances from some ivory tower, from some rigid ideological position. i'm talking about this country's finances because i know how much it costs all of us to live in debt. i know the burden of high interest payments and the way that it robs the opportunity to pay for more important priorities. i know how much stronger this country will be when we manage our debt. i know because we came together in west virginia and improved the quality of life in our sta state. and i know we can do it together in this country. the truth is, democrats don't have a lock on good ideas and neither do republicans, but with less than a hundred days to go before the election, you're not going to hear many democrats giving republicans any credit and you won't hear many republicans acknowledging that democrats have anything to bring to the table. that's a true shame. we won't fix our problems with a

"go it alone" attitude. because the only way america has ever solved our problems is to put partisanship aside and come together for the good of this great nation. put america first. the west virginia fiscal summit is just one honest way that we can take an important step toward coming together to solve our problems and one more way for the people of west virginia to show this great nation that we can and will do the heavy lifting it will take to put this country back on the right track. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa is recognized. mr. grassley: the president and c.e.o. of smithfield foods, larry pope, took to the opinion pages of the "wall street journal" again to blame all the ails -- all that ails him on the renewable fuels standard for

ethanol. some may recall that he did the same thing back in april 2010 when commodity prices were rising. at that time, he perpetuated a smear campaign and blamed ethanol in an attempt to deflect blame for rising food prices while boosting smithfield's profits. and, of course, with this newspaper article, he's back at it again. i start by referring to mr. pope as "henny-penny" from the children's folktale, "chicken little." every time that smithfield has to pay a little more to america's corn farmers to feed his hogs, mr. pope starts up with the same argument that the sky is falling and it's all ethanol's fault. mr. pope's opinion piece in the "wall street journal" might lead some to believe that he's very

knowledgeable about the ethanol industry, but there are many areas of ethanol that he doesn't know much about. he continues to perpetuate the myth that ethanol production consumes 40% of the u.s. corn crop. mr. pope states -- quote -- "ethanol now consumes more corn than animal agriculture does." everyone with a basic understanding of a livestock farm, of a kernel of corn or an ethanol plant knows that that's not a true statement. according to the u.s. department of agriculture, 37% of the corn crop is used in producing ethanol but -- and a very important "but" -- the value of corn does not simply vanish when ethanol is produced. one-third -- that one-third is 18 pounds out of every 56-pound bushel of corn -- one-third of corn reenters the market as

high-value animal feed called dried distiller's grain. i would imagine that millions of hogs raised by our farms every year are fed a diet containing this ethanol coproduct. for sure it's a very big feed product for cattle. and, of course, mr. pope appears to be unaware of its existence. when the distiller's grains are factored in -- that's 18 pounds out of that 56 pounds that's left over after you make ethan ethanol -- 43% of the corn supply is available for animal feed. only 28% is used for ethanol, unlike mr. pope saying it's 40%. this is the inconvenient truth of ethanol detractors.

they prefer to live in a bubble where they believe that ethanol is diverting corn from livestock use. that is just not the case. mr. pope also proclaims that -- quote -- "ironically, if the ethanol mandate did not exist, even this year's drought depleted corn crop would have been more than enough to meet the requirements of the livestock feed and food production at decent prices." so i would like to ask mr. pope, why do you think that's the case? so why did farmers plant 96 million acres of corn this year when normally they plant between 86 million and 88 million acres of corn? why have seed producers spent millions to develop better yielding and drought-resistant traits so we can produce more corn on more acres.

but you can also produce more corn on less acres. the answer is simple -- because this gigantic industry of ethanol is there to consume more corn and more production on each acre. if not for ethanol, it's very clear that farmers wouldn't have planted 96 million acres of corn this year, because that's more acres of corn than farmers have planted in this country since 1938. without ethanol, i doubt that we'd have seen investment at the same time in higher yielding and more drought tolerant corn plants by our seed corn companies. now, i happen to think that mr. pope is an intelligent man, but he's woefully uninformed on what the issue of the ethanol industry and the demand for corn has done for the size and genetic improvement of the corn crop. it's easy to understand

smithfield's motives. they benefit from a an abundant supply of corn, not -- just not the competing demand for it. what is smithfield's primary problem? again, the answer is cost and profit. they still want to pay $2 a bushel for corn. this is an important point that i hope people understands. for nearly 30 years, until about 2005, companies like smithfield had the luxury of buying corn below the cost of production. corn prices ranged -- remained for many years, about 30 years, somewheres between $1.50 a bushel and $3 a bushel. farmers routinely lost money. the federal government then provided economic support for the farmers. producers like smithfield had the best of both worlds -- they were able to buy corn below the cost of production and they

were able to let the federal government subsidize their business by guaranteeing a cheap supply of corn. in the view of corporate livestock producers, subsidies are just fine if they allow them to buy corn below the cost of production. anybody could look like a genius with that sort of a business model. mr. pope also continues to overstate the impact of corn prices on the consumer. agriculture secretary vilsack recently stated that farmers receive about 14 cents of every $1 spent on food at the grocery store. so farmers get 14% and everybody else gets 86%, and yet the farmers of america are the problem. it happens that that 14 cents works out to be about 3 cents of that 14 cents is because of corn. a research economist at the u.s.

department of agriculture recently stated a 50% increase in the price of corn will raise the total grocery shopping bill by about 1%. to put it in perspective, the value of corn in a $4 box of corn flakes is about 10 cents. mr. pope also exaggerates the impact of ethanol on food prices in 2010, and he's doing it again. he's using the devastating drought we now have over 62% of the country and worse in the midwest of iowa where i live to once again undermine our nation's food, feed and fuel producers, and he's doing it why? to make more money. repealing the renewable fuels standard won't bolster smithfield's profits because of the flexibility built into the renewable fuels mandate. a waiver won't significantly reduce corn prices.

a recent study by professor bruce babcock, iowa state university found a complete waiver might reduce corn prices by only 4.6%. that report goes on to state -- quote -- "the desire by livestock groups to see the additional flexibility in ethanol mandates may not result in as large a drop in feed costs as hoped." and they went on to continue to quote, "the flexibility built into the renewable fuel standard allowing obligated parties to carry over blending credits from previous years significantly lowers the economic impact of a short crop because it introduces flexibility into that mandate."

the drought is enormous in both scale and severity, but we won't know the true impact until september when harvest begins. the latest estimates from the u.s. department of agriculture indicate an average yield of 146 bushels per acre. that would result in a harvest of 13 billion bushels. this would still be one of the largest corn harvests. i would suggest that those claiming the sky is falling without their call for waiving -- i would suggest that those claiming that the sky is falling withhold their call for waiving or repealing the renewable fuels standard. it's a premature action that will not produce desired results, and it would increase our dependence upon foreign oil and it would drive up prices at

the pump for our consumers. on another point, in regard to taxes and the proposals around the hill to increase taxes, i want to say that over the past few years my colleagues on the other side have come to the floor repeatedly to present a revisionist story regarding the fiscal history of the last two decades. on several occasions i've come to the floor to refute this history, so yet again and again the other side continues to present the same distorted facts, including lots of speeches just last week. the general misguided argument is that all of the economic and fiscal success of the 1990's is thanks to big tax increases by the clinton administration. and the 2001 and 2003 bipartisan

tax relief is responsible for all of our economic ills and fiscal problems. now, neither of these claims is supported by facts or a basic understanding of economics. i'll begin with the clinton tax increase which people have given so much credit to. many on the other side of the aisle argue that the clinton tax increases are proof that tax increases will not harm our economy today, when even they've heard their own president say otherwise several times until recently that you shouldn't increase taxes when you have a depression. these people frequently ask -- quote -- "if our economy grew in the 1990's with higher marginal tax rates, how can it be bad to raise marginal taxes to these former levels?" ingrained in this argument is

the assertion that tax hikes can actually be good for our economy. this assertion fails to take into account numerous economic factors that occurred alongside the clinton tax increases. the fact is that the economy grew not because of the 1993 tax increases, but despite it. the economy of the mid-1990's is a result of economic conditions that we may never see again. it was a time of great economic expansion due in large part to the advent of the internet economy. the internet spawned new technologies and created efficiencies in our economy that will never be matched. in turn we have strup businesses and -- start up businesses and huge industries. many seem to forget that the

y-2k fear that gripped the nation that helped prop up what became the infamous internet bubble that blew up on all of us. nevertheless, before the bubble burst these factors led to historically low unemployment and high workforce participation. claiming that this was due to clinton tax increase is equal to vice president gore exclaiming that he invented the internet. my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would be hard pressed to find many economic studies indicating tax increases are stimulative. the focus of economic research in this area is not about whether tax increases are harmful or beneficial to the economy. rather, the focus seems to be on the degree to which tax increases are very harmful to the economy. admittedly there are wide variations and views of economists on the responsiveness

of individuals and businesses to taxes. however, even studies by economists who can hardly be labeled as conservative have concluded that tax increases have a significant negative effect on the economy. for instance, a 2007 study by christina romer, president obama's former chief economist, found that -- quote -- "tax increases are highly contractionary and have very large effect on output." in fact, this study found that a tax increase of 1% of gross domestic product could lower real g.d.p. by at least 3%. another likely contributor to the growth of the 1990's was the peace dividend that we reaped from the end of the cold war, and we have ronald reagan's tear-down of the soviet union to

thank for that phenomenon. the end of the cold war allowed for a reduction of government spending as a result of g.d.p. coupled with priorities pushed by the republican-led congress to reach a balanced budget and to reform welfare spending as a percentage of g.d.p. dropped to the lowest point in 30 years. with the government spending less on people's money -- of the people's money, more was left in the hands of the private sector. this allowed the private sector to innovate, to invest and eventually create jobs. the peace dividend is also the largest contributor to reining in deficits in the 1990's. the biggest source of deficit reduction -- 35% -- came from the reduction of defense spending. the next biggest source of deficit reduction -- 32% -- came from other revenue because of a growing economy. another 15% came from interest

savings. let's get to the clinton tax increase and reducing deficits. the clinton tax increase, on the other hand, only accounted for 13% of the deficit reduction. only 13%. there are other -- there are further factors that contributed to the economic growth *ft 1990 -- of the 90's, including expansion of free trade, in the 1997 reduction in the capital gains tax rate. however, in the interest of time, i'm going to go on to other issues. one thing is clear, though, from this period of the 1990's, the economic growth of that time was not thanks to the clinton tax increase, nor was it a major player in bringing our deficit into balance. today we cannot rely on the unique economic conditions that we experienced during that decade of the 1990's. some of which are artificial, to

buttress the negative effects of the tax increase. in fact we're in the middle of one of the worst economic eras since the great depression. unemployment has remained above 8% for over 41 straight months, almost three and a half years, in other words. economic growth has been anemic. each passing day economic indicators are pointing more and more to the chance of a double-dip worldwide recession. last wednesday it was reported that great britain's economy contracted at the rate of .7%. then on friday it was reported that our own economy is stalling. real g.d.p. grew at an annual rate of just 1.5%, continuing its downward trend of three straight quarters. in a recent block post nobel laureate economic gary becker addressed the question of whether raising taxes on

high-income earners is a very good idea. in his post, professor becker entertained arguments. these were arguments by the supporters of the tax increases, by hypothesizing that there is a 50-50 chance that higher taxes on the so-called rich would damage the economy. of course i believe, as do professor becker, that in reality his chance is much higher than 50-50. however, even granting the other side this generous consumption, he concludes the benefit of taxes was outweighed by the potential damage they would cause. according to professor becker, even if richer individuals only slightly reduced their work hours and reduced their effort at work, the gain in tax revenue from these individuals would not be great. in contrast -- quote -- "the cost to the economy in the

chance that higher taxes greatly discourage their efforts is likely to be substantial in terms of fewer hours work and less work effort by high-income individuals reduced incentives to start businesses, less investment in their human capital, investing abroad rather than in this country. and even migration abroad. yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are pushing billions of dollars of tax increases. just last week they voted to increase taxes on nearly one million flow-through businesses. their vote to increase taxes on job creators came on the heel of an ernst & young study detailing its ramifications. this study concluded that these proposed tax hikes on top of the 3.8% tax increase on dividends, interest and capital gains that was added to pay for the health

care reform bill, would reduce our economic output by 1.3%. the ernst & young study also found that real after-tax wages would fall by 1.8% as a result of president obama's policies. even in the face of this information, my colleagues on the other side seem all too willing to gamble with a chance that our stalling economy can withstand such a hit. by doing this they're playing russian roulette with our economy. to my colleagues, i ask: how certain are you that tax increases on kwrob -- job creators won't be damaging the economy? if you have any doubt, i suggest don't pull the trigger. i'd like to shift gears a little bit to address the record of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief. just as a perfect storm of good

economic conditions blew at the back of the clinton administration, a perfect storm of bad economic conditions and unpredictable events blew in the face of the bush administration. it is undisputed that at the end of the clinton administration, the congressional budget office was projecting a ten-year budget surplus of $5.6 billion. keep in mind, though, that c.b.o. projections was based on assumptions that did not pan out. the c.b.o. failed to predict the bursting of the tech bubble that was so beneficial in the previous years. c.b.o. also did not predict the september 11, 2001, tragedy that wreaked havoc on our economy. in reaction to the economic recession from these events, congress enacted the bipartisan

2001 tax relief that cut tax rates across the board, providing tax relief to virtually all taxpayers. then in 2003, congress expedited this relief so the benefit of lower rates would take effect more quickly. this resulted in one of the shortest and shallowest economic recessions yet on record. the economy grew for 25 straight quarters, making it the fourth longest period of economic expansion since 1930. additionally, we had 47 straight months of private sector job gain. moreover, the expanding economy led to higher than expected revenues. that is a fact. revenue actually rose in the years following the tax relief bill, peaking at 18.5% of g.d.p. in 2007, well above the historical average of around 18%. in fact, the congressional

budget office projects that if we extended all the 2001 and 2000 tax relief today, revenues would once again exceed the historical average. under this scenario, the c.b.o. projects that by 2022, revenues will reach 18.5% of g.d.p. from 2004-2007, the deficit also shrank from a high of $412 billion to a low of $160 billion. that means the budget deficit was cut by more than half in just three years. given the trillion dollar deficits we're experiencing under president obama, a deficit below $200 billion would be very welcome news, yet c.b.o. projects that even if all the tax increases in president

obama's budget were enacted, deficits would never drop below $500 billion in the ten-year period 2013-2022. now, i will give president obama credit when he says this, that he took office in very tough economic times. the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis gave him a very high hill to climb, but by any assertion that the 2001 and 2003 tax relief is related to these events is without meritocrats. there is plenty of blame to go around for the housing bubble. it was a culmination of housing policy, expanding administrations of both parties. it was further fueled by the federal reserve providing historically low interest rates and cheap credit.

however, the president's policies have failed at getting us out of this mess. the president's party passed the president's nearly trillion dollar stimulus bill. he claimed this would keep the unemployment rate below 8%. however, the unemployment climbed to a high of 10.1% and has never dropped below 8% during his almost four years in office. the president's party also passed the health care bill, which the president sold as a job creator, and the financial reform bill that was supposed to fix our financial system. however, both of these bills which the president signed have actually turned out to be costly to our economy and a hindrance to job creation. now president obama appears ready to gamble with the economy. he appears ready to go all in on raising taxes on our nation's job creators. in doing so, he is betting that

raising taxes on the so-called wealthy will result in a political payoff exceeding the chances his actions will throw us back into recession. it is not so long ago that i remember the president saying what i have already referred to in this speech. you don't raise taxes in a recession. the president's statement is as true now as it was then. let's end the political theater of holding votes for the purpose of campaign ads. let's instead actually do what the people sent us here to do. let us not drive the american economy headlong off the fiscal cliff. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from virginia is recognized. mr. warner: mr. president, i ask consent to speak for as long

as -- for up to 15 minutes on two subjects. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. warner: mr. president, i rise today, first of all, to address the important legislation pending before this body, s. 3414, the cybersecurity act of 2012. i have followed this debate and want to compliment particularly senator lieberman and senator collins and senator rockefeller, senator feinstein, and folks like senator kyl and senator whitehouse who have been trying to find some common ground in this area. and i hope at some point in the next day or so we will be able to proceed to this bill and have it fully debated. many senators bring different levels of expertise to this issue. i hope my voice as someone who spent 20 years in the cooling field and the telecom industry

before i entered government service and somebody who has had the honor in the three and a half years i have been in this body to serve on the intelligence committee, the commerce committee and the banking committee, three of the committees that all immediately intersect with the challenges around cyber can add a bit of my perspective to this debate. let me start with some of the concerns that have been raised by it appears the opponents to this legislation have focused, that can in this area around cyber, how to make sure we have appropriate information sharing, how do we set some standards, who should enforce those standards, because i think most all of us -- and anyone who has looked into this area would recognize it is not a question

of when we are going to have a major cyber attack or if we're going to have a major cyber attack, it's really a question of when. as a matter of fact, we have already as has been reported in the press attacked daily by foreign agents, criminal elements, hackers that are constantly probing our country's cyber defenses on both the public and private side. and one of my reasons why i think it is so appropriate that we move on this legislation and soon is that i have great fears that when we have a major cyber element or cyber attack, that as we -- in the reaction to that attack, congress may, as they have done so many times in the past, overreact because we didn't take action before something that we knew was imminent would be taking place. so i do think this piece of

legislation -- and i could have supported an even stronger piece of legislation -- is a great first step in this area. i'm going to come back in a moment to some amendments that i hope to offer to this legislation because to deal with some of the concerns that other members have raised and other folks have raised on this issue, but let's talk about again why we -- why we need cyber legislation and why we need it now. inaction is not a solution. every national security expert, from not just the current administration but previous administrations and most members of congress agreed that the status quo is not sustainable. over a five-month period between october, 2011, and february, 2012, there were 50,000 cyber attacks on private government networks, private and government networks, and we're told between 2009 and 2011, attacks on u.s.

infrastructure increased by a factor of 17. and as more and more nations and rogue actors get more sophisticateed computer and technology knowledge, these numbers are going to exponentially grow. as the f.b.i. has said, cyber espionage, computer crime and attacks on critical infrastructure will surpass terrorism as the number-one threat facing the united states. think how many things we have done appropriately, the previous administration and this administration, in terms of homeland security to protect our nation against the threat of terrorists. we now have the director of the f.b.i. saying the cyber threat will soon surpass terrorism in terms of a threat to our nation. i know as a former business guy that we are already seeing manifestations of this threat in other areas. intellectual property theft is one of the most insidious

threats we face right now. a former f.b.i. agent who specialized in counterintelligence and computer intrusion was quoted as saying that in most cases, companies don't realize they have been burned until years later when a foreign competitor puts out their very same product, only making it 30% cheaper. we have already loss our manufacturing base in many ways. are we really prepared by not putting appropriate cyber protections in place to lose our r&d base as well? i know there are some who say, well, cyber is different. cyber is different in certain ways, but in many ways, it's similar. just as we would never have a nuclear facility without guards and a wall and a fence or -- i see my good friend, the senator from louisiana -- we would never have power facilities or leaf -- levees without appropriate protections, how could we not

have standards or information sharing with threats that are coming in amongst not only our public sector entities but our private sector entities as well? as a matter of fact, as a former business guy, i had been surprised at some of the resistance by some business organizations who were saying this requirement of both information sharing and some minimum standards would actually be a burden on us, and i actually in many ways think somewhat the opposite because there are a number of businesses right now that have taken the responsible step, put in place significant cyber protections and competitors in their industry, because they are not taking those same -- putting those same protections in place are actually free riders on the system, yet when -- not if, but when we have a major cyber event, if one of those folks, one of those companies who have

not put appropriate protections in place end up causing dramatic harm to our economy or to that industry sector, all the industries, all the businesses in that sector will one way or the other end up paying the price. again, one of the reasons why we need both this information sharing and some level of standards. now, i know to try to move forward in terms of actual standards, mandatory standards, we're not going to have that at this point, and that we have set up a measure and again want to commend senator kyl and senator whitehouse for working through what i think is a -- is a pretty darn good compromise where there would be an industry group that would develop in effect best practices, because agreeably it is hard for government and with bureaucracy moving so slow to keep up, particularly with something like technology, but would allow an industry group to come up with in effect best

practices, and those companies that adhere to those best practices, would actually receive legal and other protections so that we could encourage folks to make sure that we have in place the kind of protections that all industries in our country needs. now, to make clear, though, that we don't have mandatory standards, we have put in place place -- let me just make sure i have got my pages here on the right level. i have been working with senator snowe on a couple of amendments. i believe there are other members who will join us on at least one of these amendments. the first amendment is very important and hopefully will go some distance in terms of clarifying one of the issues

that seems to be a major subject of debate in this legislation, and that is to modify -- and again, working with the chairs of the committee, we may even move beyond this modification to elimination, but to modify a key section of the bill, section 103, by making clear that the standards set by bill -- by this bill for the protection of infrastructure are indeed voluntary. this amendment makes it clear that this bill does not in any way alter the authority of any federal agency to regulate the security of critical infrastructure. again, there were some concerns there might have been a mistake in the earlier draft. this amendment makes clear that the standards that are developed by industry working groups will be voluntary and that nothing in this legislation will allow any federal agency to regulate the security of critical infrastructure. i believe this amendment should alleviate the concerns of some

that the bill might place -- put in place mandatory standards for infrastructure protection. again, despite the very clear language that already exists in the bill, the standards are voluntary. it is my understanding that this amendment will be considered as part of a broader set of solutions negotiated by senator lieberman and whether our amendment comes forward or whether it is broadened in a manager's package, i hope it will clarify this portion of the debate about mandatory versus voluntary. voluntary is a good first step. the fact that this will be developed by -- by industry working groups, the fact that this will not be subject to the lagging time of government bureaucracies or rule making hopefully will move us in the right direction. a second amendment, one that again working with senator snowe on that's a bit more technical

but particularly for my colleagues on the commerce committee, i hope will be able to gain some support, seeks to ensure that the authority provided to d.h.s. to sole source highly specialized products will result in the procurement of interoperable standards and products whenever possible. what does that mean in english? it means whenever government goes out and particularly during sole sourcing of a solution set, too often i've seen this in my old industry of telecom years in and years out, people will develop a -- a particular product or solution that works for that company's only set of standards and when the government subsequently or other private sector entities go on and buy and or replace or expand whatever particular system if it's not interoperable with the rest of the telecommunications system or the network, we're

not getting value for our dollar. this is a small issue in the context of cybersecurity but both senator snowe and i believe it is important for the purpose of competition and should lower the overall cost of key technologies and services for the taxpayer. so, mr. president, as i close on my first comments, i do hope that we'll be able to move forward before the break on the question of cybersecurity. i think great progress has been made in the negotiations. i know there's a lot of issues that remain to be resolved. but i would reinforce what so many other colleagues have already said. it's not a question of if we're hit by a cyber attack. it's only a question of when in terms of a major incident. let's get ahead of the game. let me take two more moments and rise on one other issue. as many of my colleagues and i know the floor staff knows, i come down on a fairly regular basis to honor great federal employees with all of the

challenges we face with the fiscal cliff and i see my good friend and partner, the senator from oklahoma here, he and i both are always trying to look for ways we can get better value for our taxpayer. one of the things that we need to do is find ways to reward and recognize the good work of so many federal employees who share that goal of getting better value for the taxpayer. i know the senator from oklahoma has particularly worked with the g.a.o. on a number of occasions to find and root out duplication and other issues where we can save dollars. i come down on a regular basis and recognize federal employees because so many times they're under assault when they do good things. today i do that one more time with a recognition of another great federal employee, and in this case diane prisonstein, associate commissioner for the office of international programs for the social security administration. she has overseen the creation of the compassionate allowance

program which has allowed thousands of seriously ill americans to gain approval for much-needed social security benefits in a matter of days or weeks rather than months or years although in this area of social security disability we need to make sure that only the appropriate beneficiaries are receiving those funds. for years, the social security disability insurance program has faced backlogs and delays in processing claims. in 2011 there were on average 700,000 pending cases. we need to do a better job of evaluating and weeding out some of those cases. couple this with what used to be a lack of caseworker knowledge on rare illnesses and the result was a number of applications with rare illnesses ircorrectly denied federal benefits. they then had to face an appeals process which took years to complete. beginning in 2008 ms. bronstein partnered with patient advocacy graps and n.i.h. to come up with a list of 25 cancers and rare diseases that would automatically qualify an

applicant to receive benefits. to further improve the speed and efficiency and cost cost-effectiveness of this process an easy to use reference guide and training programs were put together to aid caseworkers. according to the commissioner michael estrub when ms. bronstein began work, some americans were waiting two to four years for a decision. now with these devastating disabilities get approved for benefits in a matter of days. in tweb 2010 the program was able to assist an estimated 45,000 people and 65,000 people in tbef in 2011. i hope my colleagues join me in honoring ms. bronstein for her commitment to public service. we are going to have some hard, hard choices to make beyond the question of cybersecurity but as we approach this cliff there will be asked more of all americans, will be asked more of our federal employees. we are going to have to continue to find ways to ratchet out to those programs that are due

duplicative, those areas where we're not getting value for our dollar and, again, i know this is an issue of concern to the senator from louisiana and from oklahoma but when we find initiatives that work and do find federal employees who are helping us provide value particularly for those in need at a good price, they deserve this recognition. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. ms. landrieu: i'd like unanimous consent to speak up to seven minutes on an unrelated matter. the presiding officer: without objection, the senator is recognized. ms. landrieu: let me say before i start speaking about the purpose i want to thank senator warner for his leadership, the senator from virginia who has many federal employees, many defense contractors in virginia, and the senator from virginia recognizes, the great threat to our nation today in cybersecurity and the fact

senator knows very well there are literally thousands of attacks taking place as we speak. that is why as we get ready to go back to our states for the august recess and visit with constituents, we are pressing very hard for a positive vote to move forward on the debate to fashion a cybersecurity bill for our nation. so i thank the senator for his leadership and of course the tremendous federal employees that do get beat up all the time but in fact do remarkable work for our nation and for the world. so i thank the senator from virginia. i wanted to come to the floor, mr. president, to speak about a bill that i have the pleasure of helping to lead with several of my colleagues, particularly senator grassley, who has been my long-standing partner and a wonderful cochair of the foster care caucus. there are any number of us, republicans and democrats, who have our eyes on and our hearts

connected to the over 500,000 children that are technically being raised by the government. now, the government does many things well. raising children isn't one of them. and so it's our responsibility when we enter into or respond to a case of abuse, gross abuse, or neglect, gross neglect, that we respond appropriately by removing children from homes, unfortunately, being tortured at times by their own parents which is inconceivable to mean and to many but, unfortunately, it happens. remove children, hopefully, that is temporary until the situation at home can be addressed with community services, faith-based services, until the children can be returned to parents who

have been healed of their situation. that is not always the case and we work as quickly as we can to find responsible and able relatives to take in the child, willing and able relatives, the law says, to take in the child with sibling groups intact. and if that's not possible, mr. president, then we seek to find a family in the community that will adopt these children. and the wonderful thing that i want to say or the thing i want to say about these wonderful children, while their families may be broken, families may disintegrate for all sorts of reasons -- mental health, drug abuse, uncontrollable violence, criminal activity that disintegrates a family, and children are most certainly affected. but these children in many instances aren't broken. their families are broken. if these children at ages of zero to one or two or three or nine or 12 or 15 could be given

an opportunity to be adopted into the loving arms of a stable family that will raise that child or children as their own, or to be reunified with loving family members is ideal. as i said, governments do many things well. raising children isn't one of them. human beings raise other human beings, and we need to do a better job of placing our children in quality temporary foster homes and then finding permanent loving homes. we have this crazy notion in america and around the world that children are grown when they're 18 and so we put all their belongings in a plastic bag and say goodbye to them and please forget my cell phone number because you've aged out of the system. several of us have been working for years, senator chafee for one, former senator, to create more permanent opportunities for extended independent living. and while i support that and it's much better than putting

their things in a bag, their few little items after 18 years and sending them on their way, we now can extend that help until they're 21. but what we really need to be doing is finding families for these children. i'm 57, and i still need my family. i still talk to my mother and father almost every day. i was with my family this weekend. they will be with me and have been with me for every important moment of my life. when did somebody get a notion that children don't need a family after they're 18? it's a silly notion and it's not even true. we would not send our own children out into the world alone by themselves. so our whole foster system needs great reform, and we're working on that. but one piece of this system that needs reform is what we're trying to address today by introducing the uninterrupted scholars act, which is a bill that senator grassley and many of us, senator begich, senator

blunt, senator boxer, senator franken and senator klobuchar, have dwraishously -- graciously agreed to sponsor. congresswoman bass is a representative from california's 33rd district. she along with michele bachmann from minnesota, congresswoman marino from pennsylvania and mcdermott from washington, d.c. have introduced the same bipartisan bill in the house. we're very strong about the strong bipartisan support for this bill. all this bill says -- and it makes such sense, i can't believe it's not in the lawalready -- is when the child comes into the care of the government, the government agency responsible for the care of this child -- now it's not parents any longer because the parents' rights either have been terminated or in the process of being terminated. the government will have the right or the agencies representing the government, to

their academic records. what's happening now is foster children are getting lost, not only in the system but lost in their schools because of the difficulty in getting access to education records. under the guise that these records should be private, etc. what's happening is some of these privacy rules are not protecting the children, they're protecting the system that's broken and that is the problem. we are doing everything we can to protect the privacy of the child, but what's happening is some of these privacy rules are putting up a screen so that you really can't find out that the school is not doing its job on behalf of the child or the social workers are not doing their job on behalf of the child. so this simply streamlines the process of making sure that academic records can be accessed by foster families, either adoptive families or guardians, without having to go through the

courts for long, extended time frame. i think this is an important change. it's one of probably a hundred changes to this system that need to be made and, of course, we can make these new laws in washington. a lot of this has to be carried out with heart and compassion and common sense, which, unfortunately, we cannot legislate from washington. but what we can do is to try when we see a problem -- this problem was identified not by me or by my staff. it was actually identified by foster youth who came up here this summer to intern and brought to our attention the issue that some of their records are not accessible to their foster families who are trying their best to raise them and to help them, etc., etc. so the young people themselves have asked for this change. we're happy to accommodate that request. and let me just end by saying, again, there are over 480 --

about 400,000 to 500,000 children that are in our foster care system, representing less than a half of 1% of all the children in america, which is about 100 million. but it's an important .5% because these are children whose families have failed them terribly. these are children that are vulnerable and need us to love them extra special, to help them extra special. and that's what some of us spend a good bit of our time trying to do because they are willing and able to become great citizens of our nation but need that extra special help. so this uninterrupted scholars act will give access with protections to their academic records. senator franken has a bill to give them choice in their public schools so they can stay with their friends, their teachers as they, unfortunately, have to move around in the system. many people will benefit, most importantly, the youth involved.

thank you. i've introduced the bill earlier today. we have six cosponsors, and i want thank senator coburn for letting me speak in advance of his time on the floor, and i yield the floor. mr. coburn: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection, the senator is recognized. mr. coburn: you know, this is pretty unusual for me to come to the floor to say i want to spend money. but i have had a long-standing problem as i sign the letters of condolences to hundreds of families in oklahoma who have lost their loved one by serving this country. and i come today to the floor to offer a critique on one of the

most important things to the people who truly put their lines -- lives on the line for this country. it's a national security issue, but it's really our men and women in uniform, and the very most important deployed weapons system over the last ten years of war -- and that's the army service rifle, and their other small arms. there's nothing more important to a soldier than his rifle or her rifle. there is simply no excuse for not providing our soldiers with the best weapon, not just a weapon that is good enough. and as i go through this, i'm going to give you a history of what the military has done or rather, basically what they've not done in terms of having available for our soldiers a weapon that is capable of giving them the best possible chance

when they serve our country. you know, over the last few years we've spent $8,000 per soldier on new radios. but we still are using a weapon that's 25 years old when it comes to their m-4. and i first got involved in this when i got emails -- i gave many in the oklahoma national guard who served multiple tours with lots of life lost in iraq and afghanistan, and i gave those soldiers my personal email and i said if you're having a problem over there, email me. so when i started hearing about the malfunction, the lack of effectiveness of the m-4 for the oklahomans who were over there, the same weapon the career army has, it's the same weapon that everybody that's issued a standard rifle is given, except

for our special forces. and everybody else in the world that has a better rifle than the u.s. soldier on the ground fighting on our behalf. i've noted before in the congressional record that i have lifted my objection to ms. heidi shyu to be assistant secretary of the army for acquisitions. it's an important position. she's in charge of $28 billion worth of expenditures. my objection was due to the army's continued lack of urgency in modernizing and fielding new rifles, carbines, pistols and ammunition for our rooms. ms. shyu has been responsive and provided future plans for small arms and ammunition.

so when i started getting the questions from our troops in iraq and afghanistan, i started looking into what was happening. most of our soldiers know exactly what to do and how to care for their rifle. they know how to take care of it. so we looked into the issue, and what we found, that there were several studies that raised questions about the reliability of the m-4 rifle and whether there was a better weapon out there for our troops. for example, our special forces in february, 2001, said when the m-4 short barrel and gas tube increased risks that the round might not eject from the rifle properly after they fired. in other words, they fire it and the round doesn't come out. that's called a jam. and when you're having bullets coming at you and your rifle's

jamming, what we did, we set up a test and the army wouldn't do it so i held the secretary of army pink guerin's position and we talked and he assured me that we would have a new competition for a new rifle for our troops. that was 2007. here we are, six years later, and the army is now telling us we're going to have a new competition in 2014. but in the meantime we had a test done against our soldiers' rifle and everybody else's in the world. in terms of the dust test. we came in last. so we're sending our troops to defend us and fight for a cause that we have put blood, sweat, tears, and a trillion dollars into, and we're sending them with one that doesn't work the best. my question to the army today is

why? i can tell you why. because the guys that are responsible for making the decision on purchasing the rifles are not the guys that are out there on the line. because if they were, we would have already had this competition and our service men and women would be getting new rifles. and it's not that we can't do it. because what we learned as we went back in and reuped in afghanistan, we determined that the m rap was not suitable for the rocky terrain as compared to what we used it for in iraq. in less than 16 months after rapid testing and fielding, a new mrap all-terrain vehicle

designed specifically for afghanistan, a complicated piece of vital equipment costing half a million dollars each started arriving in afghanistan. so it's not that we can't supply our soldiers with the new rifle. it's not that it can't be done. it's that we refuse to do it. for $1,500 we can give every person on line something equivalent to what our special forces have today. let me just show you, some history. the age -- the average age of our troops' rifle is 26 years. the average age of the german military's rifle, small arms, is 12. of the u.s. special operations forces, theirs is eight. they got new technology. our regular front-line guys, they don't get it.

they can't have it. costs the same. but they can't have it because it's not a priority for the leadership in the army to give the most deployed piece of equipment our troops need that defends them, protects them, and gives them the ability to come home alive, we won't give it to them. it's shameful. it's shameful. let me give you a history of what happened. just once in afghanistan. i'll find my reference for it. on july 13, 2008, in the battle of winot in afghanistan, 200 taliban troops attacked u.s. troops at a remote outpost in eastern afghanistan. the taliban were able to break through our lines, entered the

main base before eventually being repelled by are artilleryd aircraft. what is notable about the battle was the perceived performance of the soldiers of their small arms weapons in the initial part of the battle. here's some quotes. my m-4 quit firing and would no longer charge when i tried to correct the malfunction. wouldn't work. i couldn't change my weapon and put another round in because it was too hot. i got so mad i threw my weapon down. it would be bad enough if this was the first time this happened. it isn't the first time it's happened. it's happened multiple times to our troops in our present conflicts. so all you have to do is go back to what happened with the m-16, and when they were first used in vietnam. there were instant reports of jamming and malfunctions. one tragic but indicative marine after action read we left with

72 men in our platoon and came with 19. believe it or not, you know what killed most of us? our own rifles. practically every one of our dead was found with his m-16 torn down next to him where he had been trying to fix it. that's occurring now. except it's not getting any press. again, i'd ask my colleagues in the senate, why would we not give our soldiers the capability that almost every soldier has, except ours? there's another aspect of this that i think needs to be shared, and that's the fact that it's all about acquisitions and culture rather than about doing the right thing. i don't like giving this talk, critical of the leadership of the army. but when it's going to take seven years to build a new rifle and in 18 months we can build and design a completely new $500

billion -- 5 hoopts piece of -- 5 hoopts piece of qipt. or give them a new radio which are going to be replaced in two years with another 8,000 bucks and we can't give them a $1,500 equivalent, there's something wrong with our system 0. our priorities are out of whack. if the department of defense had spent just 15% less on radios, they could give every soldier in the military a new, capable, modern weapon. and it doesn't just apply to their rifle. one of the biggest -- the biggest complaint after the m-4 is the fact that the regular army gets a nine millimeter pistol that weighs over two pounds but our special operations get a .45 caliber pistol that weighs less than one

and a half. big difference when you're out there all day. but the most important thing is, is a .45 caliber round is twice the size of a nine millimeter round. when you're shooting it and you hit somebody, it's going to take them down. a 5.9-millimeter doesn't. -- a mine millimeter doesn't. we're giving them an inferior pistol. finally here's an m-4 carbine compared to an hk-416. one other point i'd make. this piece of equipment fires on automatic. this piece of equipment because the military wants to save some bullets will not fire on automatic. so our soldiers are facing people who have automatic fire and they can fire in bursts of three and at half the rate of what they're facing.

why would we do that? so we're asking people to defend this doesn't, old style 26-year-old m-4, we can buy a brand-new one that gives them everything they need and gives them the best weapon. don't they deserve that? you know, a lot of people do a lot of things for our country, but nobody does for our country what the soldier on the front line does -- nobody. this is a moral question, mr. mr. secretary of the army. this is a moral question. get the rifle competition going. members of congress, members of the senate who are on the armed services committee don't allow this to continue to happen. do not allow this to continue to

happen. there is no excuse for it. we should be embarrassed. we should be ashamed because what we're really doing is sending our troops into harm's way whe with less than the bestt we can provide for them. mr. president, i yield the floor. [inaudible] mr. president, i ask that my entire speech be made -- as written, occur in the record following my comments. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. coburn: i yield the floor. the presiding officer i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. moran: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from kansas. mr. moran: mr. president, i ask the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. moran: understand i ask unanimou-- and i askunanimous ce senate in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. moran: back home in kansas we're praying and hoping for rain. our state along with many of the country is in a very serious drought. crops are dying, cattle are hungry and are being sold off, and water is in scarce supply. every county in kansas -- all 105 -- have all been declared disaster counties. half of the continental united states is in the worst drought since 1956, and the situation is

expected only to get worse. in this photograph my friend ken from palco, kansas, a little town in northwest, kansas, is pictured here with dry grass and hungry cattle. over the past few weeks, ken has had to reduce his herd at -- to reduce his herd at lower prices than before because there's just not enough feed to feed the cattle. ken, like many producers, has been diligently building his herd of cattle over many years and is now seeing those cattle sold due to the drought, undermining his efforts year after year to develop a herd. paul and tommy westfall from haven, kansas, a little bit north and west of wichita, and their two daughters jena and reaganen, are pictured here. south central kansas has been hard hit by the drought. the corn on the right never got

above chest high, and dried up months before it was time to harvest. paul swath will soon bail his failed beans in the left photo and try to save some for feed for cattle this winter. hard times are there and think you're not over. -- and they're not over. the u.s. has a long history of drought and recovery, from the dust bowl to today we have faced periods of drought. in the 1930's we were often called the worst of hard times. don hartwell, a farmer on the kansas and nebraska border wrote in his diary on may 21, 1936, "15 years ago the republican river bottom was an expanse of alfalfa, now it is wasted, shifted sand, washed-out ditches, cockle burs and

devastation i doubt very much if it ever can be reclaimed." a few weeks later he wrote in his diary, "i wonder where i will be a year from now?" in the 1930's, folks were faced with severe drought which resulted in the dust bowl. people were forced to abandon their farms and ranches and to give up the only way of life they knew. crops, livestock, and livelihoods vanished with the dust. they were unimaginable times. thankfully, those unimaginable times passed and the rains came and the republican river bottom was reclaimed. this happened with the help of the good lord and by individual efforts by those who refused to give in to those bad times, to give in to nature. if you look at the drought now and compare it to that of the 1930's, you'll notice a huge difference. there is no dust bowl. the programs and conservation management tools that were used have worked.

the forward-thinking american farmer and rancher, the landowners that adopted new land and livestock management practices have made conservation the most effective drought mitigation effort available today. the conservation programs are in danger. while many conservation practices can be planned and executed by individual farmers and ranchers, certain programs administered by the department of agriculture deserve our attention so that -- so that these important initiatives do not expire on september 30. in just about 60 days, farm programs will expire and that means more uncertainty, compounding an already disastrous drought situation. right now farmers and ranchers are wondering the same thing don hartwell wondered in 1936 -- where am i going to be a year from now? as congress debates the future of domestic agricultural policy, it is critical that risk mitigation tools are included for farmers and ranchers.

most important among these tools is crop insurance. with the absence of direct payments in both the house and senate versions of a new farm bill, crop insurance is and will remain the last protective tool available to those producers. viable crop insurance ensures that a farm operation can survive difficult times, when there's drought or hail or flood in hopes that they can experience a successful yield the following year. farmers always have hope. tough times now, come back now. but crop insurance, as valuable as it is, does not cover all the problems that agricultural producers face and particularly livestock producers are not usually generally eligible for crop insurance coverage. these producers require risk mitigation and safety net just like producers covered by crop insurance. disaster programs for livestock along with crop insurance for cultivation agriculture give providers the security they need to plan and invest for the

future. currently, ranchers and cattlemen are left with few disaster programs. the 2008 farm bill disaster programs expired this year, leaving producers across our drought-stricken country with less protection from mother nature. these programs are an important safety net for farmers and ranchers, and farmers and ranchers like ken and paul deserve to know what the future of these programs will be. we shouldn't expect producers to go plant crops or to buy and sell livestock if they don't know what the rules are. putting these programs back in place and ensuring a sound safety net is vital for drought recovery, continued conservation work, and for the affordable food supply for the people of our country. kansas farmers and ranchers shouldn't have to keep guessing. it's too important to their families, their industry, and their nation for more delay. we must give agriculture producers the long-term certainty and support they

deserve. while we wait for washington, we'll continue to hope and pray. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. mr. kerry: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, what is the parliamentary situation? the presiding officer: we are on the motion to proceed. mr. kerry: mr. president, a number of us have spoken with increasing concern -- i think most senators have come to the floor in the course of the last months to express their alarm about the politics that surround big issues in our country that

demand action and not partisanship, not acrimony, but which we continue to simply find a way to avoid. we've been artists in the politics of avoidance here in washington in the course of too long a period now. the debt and the fiscal cliff are obviously perfect examples of where, despite all the warnings, despite all of the experts and the advice that we get, congress is fundamentally stuck in political cement of our own mixing. no one will credibly here the existence of the fiscal cliff, the crisis of our budget, the tax system and so forth. so that at least as an issue that is avoided gets a level of

credible, credible sort of amount of words just being thrown at it. but there's another issue which in many ways is just as serious because of its implications for all that we do on this planet, but which doesn't any longer elicit that kind of concern or expressions of alarm on both sides of the aisle or from that many senators. and the two words that have described this particular issue over a long period of time now have actually become somewhat words of almost skepticism in many quarters in america, or a kind of shrug. i don't know what i can do about it. it's not something that i ought to really worry about. someone else going to take care of it.

or maybe it isn't real. and the words are "climate change." climate change over the last few years has regrettably lost credibility in the eyes and ears of the american people because of a concerted campaign of disinformation. a concerted campaign to brand the concept as somehow slightly outside of the mainstream of american political thinking. i have to say it's been a remarkably effective campaign. you can't sit here and say it hasn't worked. every opportunity to cast a pall on facts with some kind of

cockamamie theory has been taken advantage of, and a lot of money has been spent, mr. president, a lot of money has been spent in this process of disinformation and of discrediting. the truth is that people used to joke years and years ago about those who argue that the earth was flat. and for a long period of time people argued that the earth was flat even when the evidence of astronomers and others and explorers evidenced that it was in fact quite the opposite. and so we have in effect with respect to climate change in america today what is fundamentally a flat earth caucus, a bunch of people, some of them in the united states -- congress itself -- who still argue against all the science,

all the evidence, they argue that somehow we don't know enough about climate change. or they argue that the evidence isn't sufficient. or they argue that it just is a hoax, that we have members of the united states senate who argue that it is a hoax. but that's all they do. they make the argument that it's a hoax, but they don't present and can't present any real evidence, hard scientific, peer-reviewed evidence to the effect that it is in fact a hoax. mr. president, the reason they can't is there are 6,000-plus peer-reviewed studies, which is the way science has always been done in america. if you are a scientist and you're a researcher, you do your science, you do your research,

and then your analysis is put to the test by your peers in those particular disciplines. and they pass on the methodology, the pedestrian -- the pedogy by which you arrive at the conclusion you arrive at. you have, mr. president, on the other side of the ledger not one -- not one -- zero peer-reviewed analyses that say human beings aren't doing this to the atmosphere and that humans are not contributing, or the main clause of what is happening in terms of the warming of the surface of the earth. you know, what's happened is in america, we all know it -- we're seeing it in campaigns because

of citizens united you have unfathomable amounts of money being thrown into the system -- millionaires and billionaires who plunk down millions of dollars. $10 million check at a whack, $20 million. what's happening is people buy their facts. they create their facts out of whole cloth. and as we all have been reminded so many times in recent, in the last year certainly, because of this new debate we're having in america as our colleague that i was privileged to serve with here, pat moynihan, reminded us again and again, everyone is entitled to their own opinion in america. but you're not entitled to your own facts. but in fact, in american politics today, that's not true. you are entitled, apparently,

because you can go out and buy them. you buy some scientist who you give them some, you know, appropriate amount of funds, he goes out and does a study with a particular conclusion that has to be found, and they produce a whole bunch of hurly burly to surround it and to suggest that those are in fact facts. and the result of this is that over the last year and a half, two years, we've had this concerted assault on reason, an assault on science. and, you know, this isn't the first time in the history of humankind we've been through these things. galileo was put on trial for his findings. and as we all know, there have been countless periods of times -- i mean that's why we went through an age of enlightenment, an age of reason as people challenged these old precepts that weren't based on

facts but just sort of raw beliefs and political interests in some cases, or religious interests in some cases. a handful of senators here -- senator boxer, senator whitehouse, senator sanders, senator lautenberg, the chair and senator franken -- have recently spoken out about this very process by which an incredibly important, legitimate issue of concern to all americans, to everybody in the world is being completely sidelined because of the status quo interests of powerful corporations and other interests in america that just don't want to change. or some of whom find political advantage in somehow buying into the theory, discrediting it.

this has not been an issue on which there is a profile of courage by some in the united states congress who are prepared to stand up and say what they know is true. but what has become far more convenient to avoid. i believe the situation that we face, mr. president, is as dangerous as any of the sort of real crises that we talk about today. we had a hearing in the foreign relations committee on the subject of syria, and we all know what's happening with respect to iran and nuclear weapons and the possibility even of a war. well, this issue actually is of, as significant a level of importance because it affects life itself on the planet,

because it affects ecosystems on which the oceans and land depend for the relationship of the warmth of our earth and the amount of moisture that there is, and all of the interactions that our as a cons -- that occur as a consequence of our climate. it involves our health because of policies we choose or don't tkhaous do with respect to pollution -- or don't choose to do with respect to pollution in the air. pollution didn't used to be a question mark in american politics. we fought that fight in the 1970's and 1960's. rachel carson started this enormous movement for reasonableness when she warned americans that they were living next to toxic wells, and to water that had been polluted by companies that put mercury or other poisons into the earth, that went down into the water supply, and people got cancer

and people died. and america decided in the early 1970's, with the first earth day in 1970 itself, and then the actions that congress took after that in response to the american people, everybody decided we don't want that pollution in the air. we actually passed legislation in 1972, 1973 and 1974 that created the e.p.a. america didn't even have an environmental protection agency until americans said we want to be protected, and people in congress responded to that. we passed the clean air act, clean water act, safe drinking water act, marine mammal protection, coastal zone management. all of these things came about because of an awareness among the american people that they wanted to live differently and have a different set of choices or have their politicians make a different set of choices on their behalf. now suddenly there's an assault on the e.p.a., on the clean air

act. all of a sudden pollution doesn't matter. and that's what we're talking about. greenhouse gases are in fact a pollutant. and the tar particular hrats that come with it -- particulates that come with it are particulates that have the same effect on human beings in terms of their breathing, their lungs, the input to some of their food, their water that ultimately has an impact on cancer, on emphysema, on other diseases that come as a consequence of the quality of air that you breathe. and yet, we've got this whole notion now that somehow we've gone too far, that we've done enough, or that the job has been done and we can all go home when in fact it is exactly the opposite. so with respect to pollution, there are choices here. with respect to health, the single greatest cause of young americans going to the hospital in the summertime and costing

billions of dollars to the american people is environmentally induced asthma. and that environmentally induced asthma comes about as a consequence of the ingredients that go into the air. so all of us this is related. in addition, there isn't one person in the united states senate who doesn't know that we are still more dependent than we want to be -- we're better than we were. we've made improvements. but we're still more dependent than we want to be on foreign oil. we could be doing far better and more effectively, mr. president, with respect to that dependency if we pursued an intelligent energy policy. we still don't have an intelligent energy policy after years of talking about it in senate. why that important with respect to climate change? because energy policy is the solution to the problem of climate change. if you have an effective energy policy, then you are dealing not only with your independence

issues, but you're dealing with the sources of carbon and the carbon and other greenhouse gases that are causing the problem today. now 20 years ago this year, mr. president, i was privileged to go with the senator from new jersey over there, senator lautenberg, senator john chafee, senator al gore, senator wirth and others, we went down to rio, where we took part in the first earth summit, which president george herbert walker bush took seriously. to the great credit of president george h.w. bush, he not only sent a delegation down there, he went down there himself and he spoke about the issue, and he helped to embrace a forward-leaning i think 160-something nations signed on to an agreements to try to row

train greenhouse gases. that was back in 1990. incredible, mr. president. 1992. and here we are 20 years later. we couldn't even get the time for the senate to send a delegation down there, let alone enough people who thought it was really important and of interest. an the earth summit 20 years later came and went without any major step forward or progress, and the procrastination continues. mr. president, today i remember the debate when we came back from kyoto in 1998 or so and we had a debate in the senate about whether or not the united states should take part in the kyoto treaty, which we all now know as a matter of long history that we didn't and wouldn't because it was viewed as being too unilateral, and, in fact, everybody had a question mark about what about china?

we can't possibly sign up to this because china won't do it and they will go racing ahead of us and continue to grow their economy at the speeps of the united states. well, mr. president, guess what? today china is the leading energy producer, clean energy producer in the world. china. the united states of america invented the technologies 50 years ago of solar and wind renewable energy technologies, turbines, transmission and so forth, and foatvoltaics. about four years ago, china had about 9% of the market, four years ago. two years ago, china had 40% of the market. and today, china has over 70% of the global solar market, and the united states, which invented the technology, doesn't have one

company in the top ten solar panel producers, solar energy producers of the world. and you know what's happening, mr. president? 95% of what china produces, it exports to other countries, including the united states of america. so here we are, we give up our lead, we don't get the jobs, everybody is screaming about jobs, the energy market is a $6 trillion market with about six billion users. just to put that in a perspective, the market that created the great wealth of the 1990's of the united states was in fact a $1 trillion market with about one billion users called the technology market. we saw it with personal computers and with the rest of the telephone communications technology of the 1990's. we didn't even have an internet in the united states until about

1995, 1996 that began to be commercialized. and in that short span of time, we created more wealth in america than we had ever created at any time in america's history, we created 23 million new jobs because we led in that new industry. here we are today staring at the potential of this extraordinary industry, which is the energy market, and we are just sitting on our heels while other countries take it and run with it and grow their economies, and we're sitting around trying to say where are the jobs. it's an insult. it's an insult to our intelligence, it's an insult to every american's aspirations about where they would like to see our country go. and the fact is that not just china but india and mexico, brazil, south korea, countless other countries are taking greater advantage of this than the united states, and one of the principal reasons that we have trouble getting that market

moving is we refuse to put the real price on the price of carbon. carbon has a price. everything that we're doing to our country and to our market -- to our communities today as a result of pollution is a price we're going to pay, but that price is not subsumed into the price of products, the price of doing business or anything else because we just avoid it altogether. so a lot of people continue unfortunately here to avoid the science, just not to deal with the reality of what is happening. well, yesterday, two days ago, mr. president, in "the new york times," there was a very important op-ed that appeared, and it was written by a well-known climate skeptic, dr. richard mueller, a professor of physics at the university of california in berkeley, and he

has written many times about how he did not believe that the science was adequate or had produced it. let me read his words. this is dr. mueller. "call me a converted skeptic, three years ago, i identified problems in the previous climate studies that in my mind threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, i concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. i am now going a step further. humans are almost entirely the cause." that's what this former climate skeptic has said. bottom line, we need to be armed with the facts, not with empty rhetoric, and that's exactly what dr. mueller set out to do.

let me quote him. we carefully studied the issues raised by skeptics, from urban heating, we duplicated our results, using rural data alone. prior groups collected fewer than 20% of the temperature stations. we used virtually 100% from poor station quality. we separated, separately analyzed good stations and poor ones. and from human intervention and data adjustment, our work is completely automated and hands off. in our papers, we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions. now, obviously, we all know the future has a hard way of

humbling people who try to predict it too precisely, but i have to tell you, mr. president, when the science is screaming at you pretty consist the presidentially over a period of 20 years, and not just screaming at us to say that it's coming back correctly but it's coming back with faster results, in greater amounts than the scientists predicted, as a matter of human precaution, that ought to be an alarm bell and people ought to take note. here's what dr. mueller says again. what about the future? as carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. i expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about 1.5 degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. but then he says ominously --

"but if china continues its rapid economic growth" -- and i say as a matter of parenthesis, who doesn't believe china is going to do everything in its power to continue its growth path and do what it's doing? so he says -- "if china continues its rapid economic growth, it has averaged 10% per year over the last 20 years, and its vast use of coal, it typical ly adds one new gig a watt per month -- gigawatt per month, then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years." less than 20 years, folks. in north carolina recently, state senators actually voted not to do any planning for the poe tension of sea level rise, even though scientists today tell you the sea level is rising. ask insurance companies about what they are thinking about,

about their potential exposure in liabilities as you look down the road with respect to the disasters that could come as a consequence of these changes. so the plain fact is that despite all of the evidence -- i'm not going to go through all of it right now, but it is there for colleagues to analyze. countless studies of what's happening in terms of movement of forests, literally movement as it migrates, species that have left yellowstone national park and migrated north. talk to the park rangers. talk to the folks in canada and in colorado and montana and places about the millions of acres of pine trees that have been destroyed by the pine bark beetle that now doesn't die off because it doesn't get as cold as it used to. talk to people in canada and in the north of the united states

who used to skate on ponds that used to freeze over that don't freeze over anymore. i mean, there are hundreds of examples. talk to the auto ban society -- audubon society, ask them about the reports of their members about certain plants and shrubs and trees and things that don't grow in the same places that they used to. there is a 100-mile swath in the united states now where there has been a migration of things that grow and don't grow. this will have a profound impact on agriculture in our country as we go forward if it continues. and i just share with my colleagues why that is true beyond any scientific doubt. the first scientist who actually wrote something about global climate change was a swedish scientist by the name of barhenius, and he wrote around the turn of the 19th century, 1890 something, i don't remember the year. he is the guy that first said

there is this relationship between the gases trapped in the atmosphere and there is this thing called the greenhouse effect. and in fact science has now determined to a certainty, mr. president, that the reason we can breathe here on earth today, the reason it's warm enough for us to live, the reason life itself exists on earth is because there is a greenhouse effect. and it is called a greenhouse effect because it behaves just like the greenhouse. the light comes -- comes down from the -- from the sun at a very direct angle, and many things on earth it is reflected like the ice and snow and roofs and parking lots and other things, but in the ocean and in certain other dark spots, it's -- it's subsumed into that mass. and it goes back much more

opaque than it comes down in its directness, and the reason therefore for the greenhouse gas is that it doesn't escape, it doesn't break out of the thin veneer of the atmosphere that contains the gases that creates the greenhouse effect, which actually creates an average temperature globally of about 57 degrees fahrenheit. that's why life can exist, because we have a greenhouse effect. and it stands to absolute high school if not elementary, middle school logic that if certain amount of gases are contained and there has always been a balance of some degree, that if you add to it massively and thicken the amount that is there, less heat is going to escape and you wind up augmenting that effect of the greenhouse. now, that -- scientists tell

us -- i'm not a scientist, but i learned how to listen to them, at least read it, try to think about it. the scientists tell us that in order to keep the temperature of the earth somewhere near where it is today or within the permissible range of change, you have to keep your greenhouse gases, originally they said at 450 parts per million. then as they noticed the damage and did more calculation, they came down and said no, 350 parts per million. why is this important? because today, mr. president, as we are here assembled in the senate, we are now at 397 parts per million. we're above where they say you have to hold them. and worse, without doing anything, which we're not doing, we're only adding the amounts, we're moving at a rate that will take it up to 500 or 600 parts

per million, and if that happens, you will be at a tipping point with respect to the amount of temperature chang five to seven degrees, and nobody can predict with certainty what happens except that we know that the ice already melting in greenland and in the arctic will melt faster and disappear. as more water is exposed, that dark water subsumes more of the heat, the heat creates greater, more rapid melting, and that's exactly what scientists are seeing in the arctic and antarctic today, where whole blocks of ice the size of the state of rhode island have broken off and dropped into the sea and floated south to melt. mr. president, there are dozens of other examples of what has happened. i said i wouldn't go into all of them today. i just say to my colleagues please read and challenge the science, talk to the people who

are the pure reviewers of these analyses because we have a responsibility here to future generations, to all of us to try to get this right. i have to tell you, mr. president, in the balance of right and wrong, i don't understand the judgment some people are making. we know this is a $6 trillion market as we know it, if we were to replace carbon the marketplace would move towards the new technologies and job creation that would respond to that pricing, and the united states could become a seller of these technologies and a builder of these new energy capacities in various parts of the world. astonishly, the united states of america doesn't even have an energy grid. the east coast has an energy grid, the west coast has an energy grid, texas has its own energy grid, and -- and --

and from chicago out to the dakotas there's a line of sort of an energy grid, but the entire center of the united states is just a great big gaping hole where you don't have any connected energy transmission capacity. and the result is we can't produce renewable energy down in the four corners of the southwest in colorado, new mexico, arizona, and so forth, and sell it to minnesota in the wintertime or to new england where we pay a very high price for energy. we can't send energy from one part to the other in the united states of america. it's an insult. we need to build a national energy grid. and in the building of that grid there are countless jobs to be created for americans, countless technologies to be developed. for every billion dollars we spend on infrastructure, you put 27,000 to 35,000 people to work.

if we passed our infrastructure bank effort here in the senate, for $10 billion of american taxpayer leverage, we could have $650 billion to $700 billion of infrastructure investment paid for by chinese investment, by arab emirates investment, wouldn't cost the american taxpayer a dime to be building america and putting people to work, and we're not doing it and not even building out the energy grid of our nation. so, mr. president, i hope in the end -- i'll wrap up here, but i must say to my colleagues the avoidance here of responsibility for a whole host of choices we ought to be making, and obviously, yes, it begins as i said earlier with the deficit and the debt and we can deal with those issues. there isn't a person in the senate who doesn't understand what the magic formula is going to be to do that but everybody wants to wait till the end of the election. i got it. but this issue has been waiting

and waiting and waiting for 20 years now, while other countries are stealing our opportunities to be able to be in the marketplace and be winning. and nothing screams at us more than the need to have an energy policy for our country that begins to address the realities of climate change, and nothing screams at us more than to tell the truth to the american people about climate change, to stop having it be an unusable word in american politics and not to allow it to become a source of attack and ridicule with nonfacts and a bunch of cockamamie theories that have no foundation in science or in the kind of analysis that does this institution justice. and i hope over the course of the next months we can have this fight, because nothing less than our economic future, which is in the end, our greatest strength or four military, for our security, for all of our

objectives, that's what's at stake in this effort. and i hope we will finally, finally wind up doing what is right. thank you, mr. president. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. lautenberg: before the senior senator from massachusetts leaves the floor, i want to commend him for his constant leadership in matters that are better environment, better -- more effective ways to get our energy without spoiling the environment, and putting what amounts to toxics in the air and i congratulate him for his constant leadership in this area. mr. president, one thing that democrats and republicans share is a desire to keep our children and grandchildren safe and healthy. many of us remember the days

when we simply counted to make sure our newborns have all of their fingers and toes and breathe a sigh of relief. but parents today face many more threats. an industrial -- industrial chemicals have become more common in consumer products, and we've seen an increase in certain birth defects, childhood cancers, and behavioral disorders. and that's why i've written legislation to reform our chemical management system to give parents peace of mind. about chemicals in household products. mr. president, my safe chemicals act passed out of the environment and public works committee last week, and i hope that we're going to see it on the floor of the senate this fall. we think of the home as a place where our families are safe.

we don't expect the carpet in our bedrooms, the shampoo in our showers, or the detergent in our laundry to pose a threat to our family's health. many everyday products contain chemicals, and most americans just assume that those chemicals have been tested and proven safe. but, mr. president, for the vast majority of chemicals in products in our homes, safety testing is not required. and we look at the articles that suggest what kinds of things we're talking about. every morning millions of americans wake up and kids wake up in beds treated with chemicals. their breakfasts are cooked on pans coated with chemicals and their plates are cleaned with

chemicals. today, e.p.a. lists more than 80,000 chemicals in its inventory, many of which are in regular household products, products that our children are exposed to every day. and we see a young person here, a child getting a bottle. it's made of plastic, and we don't know really what's in there. i think we can all agree that a chemical that comes into contact with a child should be tested to see if it's safe. now many if not most chemicals in products are safe, but we know that some are not. there have been too many cases of toxic chemicals showing up in our everyday lives that have horrible health effects, and we found that out only after our families have been exposed.

recently "the chicago tribune" exposed the latest example of untested chemicals wreaking havoc in o bodies. the tribune reported that flame retard ants are widespread in furniture, electronics, and other items throughout our houses, our homes. in fact, the average couch contains two pounds of chemical flame retardants. we see it here, a sofa like this looks like it's all good and no harm can come but there could be materials, chemical materials in there that are releasing -- releasing toxic fumes. but chemicals in products don't always stay in products. many of them find their way into our bodies. and it's not a clear -- clear that we are safe with any of these products because we don't

know just exactly what's in there. in fact, the tribune tragically found that a typical american baby is born with the highest concentrations of flame retardants in the world and many flame retardants are highly toxic. children born with high concentration of flame retardants can suffer devastating consequences for the rest of their lives. flame retardant chemicals have been linked to cancer, to developmental problems, and other health risks. high levels of these chemicals put newborns at greater risk of low birth weights and birth defects, and then in childhood they face lower i.q.'s and problems with fine motor skills. even in adulthood, women who are born -- women who were born

with flame retardants in their blood can have trouble becoming pregnant. imagine, we're setting our children back from day one before they've taken their first breath. and flame retardants are just one example of the problems with our chemical safety system. according to the centers for disease control and prevention, americans typically have 212 industrial chemicals, including six that cause cancer, coursing through their bodies. and we know that these chemicals can have serious health defects. we see what kind of health defects. chemicals -- chemical exposure accounts for as much as 5% of childhood cancers, 10% of diabetes, 10% of parkinson's disease and 30% of childhood

asthma can come from the exposure to toxic fumes from these chemicals. that's not a very comforting idea. mr. president, these chemicals are still around and untested because the 35-year-old law that is supposed to assess and protect against chemical health risks is broken. that law called tsca, is so severely flawed that the nonpartisan government accountability office testified that it is -- and here i quote -- "a high-risk area of the law." i want to repeat that. the law called tsca is so severely flawed that the government accountability office testified that it's a high-risk area of the law. that's a credible government department saying that this is a

high-risk area of the law. of the more than 80,000 chemicals on e.p.a.'s inventory, tsca has allowed testing of only around 200 chemicals and restrictions only on five. that's more -- of 80,000 chemicals that are being used routinely in e.p.a.'s inventory, has such a few excuses from the risks that might affect children or adults in a household. until this law is fixed, toxic chemicals will continue to poison our bodies, threaten our health. this status quo is dangerous and it's unacceptable. we've heard from parents across the country that we should not

wait any longer for reform. we had a demonstration here in washington just a few weeks ago. people asking for safer chemicals now. they're worried about it. they're parents. they don't want their children exposed to chemicals that might injure their health. so it's easy to do, mr. president, these chemicals should be tested before they're made in the product and then we don't have to worry about whether or not we're doing something that puts our kids at risk. we've already waited too long. entire generations have grown up in homes filled with untested chemicals. every year more chemicals are introduced, more children get sick, and more lives are put at risk. so i was proud when the environment and public works environment and public

committee took an important step last week by passing the safe chemicals act. we've been working on tsca reform, began our work in 2005. in the seven years since then, we've explored the topics from many angles. we talked to scientists, workers, business leaders, state officials, firefighters, researchers, legal experts, and parents who are concerned about their children's health. we also heard from senators on both sides of the aisle and throughout this process we've listened and we've learned. the result is that a commonsense bill that lays out a vision for strong but pragmatic regulation of chemicals. the bill requires the chemical manufacturers to demonstrate the safety of their products before they end up in our bodies. we already require this for pharmaceuticals and pesticides,

so there isn't any reason that we shouldn't require the same of industrial chemicals that are found in products in our bodies. the european union, canada, other countries require safety testing, but americans remain unprotected, and that's not acceptable. i've received letters in support of the safe chemicals act signed by more than 300 public health organizations, businesses, environmental organizations, health care providers, labor unions, and, again, concerned parents. and 24 senators have cosponsored my safe chemical act, and i believe that the senate should now be given -- that the full senate should now be given the chance to vote for testing of these industrial chemicals. i want to debate is on the floor oof the united states senate. we want families to know what

we're thinking about as we go through this process. they deserve to know that congress cares more about their kids' health than the concerns of of chemical industry lobby -- concerns of the chemical industry lobbyists. so, mr. president, i take -- i come to this conclusion. there is risk out there that we take unnecessarily so it's time to take action, clear this up. it would be a positive act for the chemical manufacturers so they wouldn't have to worry about responding to challenges from the law in 50 states but rather be under one guideline that takes care of them all. so it's time to take the action, the health of our children is at stake, and i hope that my colleagues across the chamber

will stand up and say, yes, yes, you're right. it's time that we challenged t the -- what we know is an exposure that should not exist and simply done would move the process very quickly into letting us know that everything that we have that has a chemical body to it is safe for our use. and with that, mr. president, i yield the floor. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. a senator: i ask that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hoeven: thank you, mr. president. i rise to speak on the need for pro-growth tax reform. it's a subject that i've been

here on the senate floor speaking about repeatedly over the course of the year and certainly over the course of recent weeks. last week, the senate voted on several tax measures. one of the measures was a measure we offered which would continue the current tax rates for a year, giving us an opportunity to engage in pro-growth tax reform. that bill was defeated in the senate. the other bill, a bill which i voted against, was a bill that would raise taxes on approximately 1 million small businesses in this country. in fact, that bill was passed. but the fact is that under the constitution, any tax measure has to start in the house of representatives. and, in fact, that's what's going on today. they are voting on a measure that would extend the current tax rates for a year, giving us

the opportunity to engage in pro-growth tax reform which i feel would truly help galvanize our economy and raise revenue for our country not through higher taxes but, in fact, through growth and through more revenue from economic growth. and i believe that's exactly what we have to do, what we have to support in the senate as well. the measure that the administration favored and that was earlier passed in the house, as i say, will be blue slipped so it won't take affect, but the problem with that measure is that it would raise taxes on individuals and small businesses, almost a million small businesses across this country would pay higher taxes and they are the generator of jobs for our economy. it also raises taxes on capital gains and it raises estate tax as well. let me talk about the estate tax or the death tax provision for just a minute. right now the estate tax

provides an exemption on the first $5 million and then amounts in an estate over that $5 million threshold are taxed at 35%. however, reverting to the pre-2001-2003 tax rates, which happens at the enof the year -- happens at the end of the year unless action is taken, unless action is taken by both the house and the senate to extend the current rates, then we revert to the tax rates before the 2001-2003 tax reductions. that means instead of a $5 million exemption and a 35% tax rate on estate tax, or the death tax, we go to a $1 million exemption with a 55% tax rate after that. think about what that means to our farms and our small businesses across the country. 24 times more farms will then be in an estate tax situation.

and something like 14 times more businesses will be in an estate tax situation. so what does that mean? well, what it means is that when a family member dies and it's time to pass on that farm or pass on that business, they're going to have to borrow money to try to pay the estate tax. and that that farm or that business that is going to have to generate enough revenue to pay that estate tax. and if you can't pay that estate tax at 55% -- 55% -- of the value of what you're passing, if that business or that farm can't service that level of debt, then you have to sell that farm or sell that small business, which may have been in the family for many, many generations. and remembered that those -- and remember that those farms, those ranches, those small businesses, that's the backbone of the american economy. and here we are at a time when we have 8.2% unemployment and

we're trying to get this economy going and we're putting our small businesses across this country in that situation. that is why it is so important that we act, and that's exactly what we have prosed. we have said -- that's exactly what we have propose. we have said hey, rather than putting our economy in that situation right now, let's set up a one-year extension of the current tax rates, let's engage in pro-growth tax reform where we actually lower rates but close loopholes which will generate economic growth and we'll get revenue from economic growth rather than from higher taxes. that is vitally important. in fact, on a bipartisan basis, two years ago, that's what we did, we extended the current tax rates. i think we had 44 democrat votes to do that here in the senate. republicans voted for it i think across the board. i think we had 44 votes on the democrat side of the aislement e

aisle. so it was absolutely a bipartisan measure, and i argue that's exactly what we have to do again. even the president came out at that time, he supported doing exactly what i just laid out. and he said, because we can't raise taxes in a recession. he said raising taxes would hurt the economy and would hurt job creation. and if you look at the statistics, today we're actually in a different economic situation today. 8.2% unemployment, over 8% unemployment for more than 41 straight months. 13 million people out of work, 10 million people underemployed, 23 million people either looking for work or looking for a better job. middle-class income has declined from approximately 55,000 to about 50,000 since this administration took office. food stamp usage has increased from 32 million recipients to 46

million recipients, and economic growth, as we've seen, is about 1.5%. last month job creation, 80,000 jobs gained during the month, but we need 150,000-job gain during just to keep up with employment. so these are the facts and the facts speak for themselves. we need to extend the current tax rates, we need pro-growth tax reform on a bipartisan basis, and we need to get control of our spending. if you look at the latest numbers from c.b.o., c.b.o. says, without taking those steps, we're looking at economic growth next year of maybe half a percent for the entire year. but if we take the steps to address the fiscal cliff, as i've described, if we take those steps to undertake pro-growth

tax reform, c.b.o. talks in terms of a 4.4% growth rate next year. think what that means to 13 million unemployed people. it means the difference between getting a job and not getting a job. the uncertainty that our economy faces right now, because of the expiration of the current tax rates at the end of the year and businesses not knowing what's going to happen, is freezing investment capital on the sidelines, freezing business expansions. there is more private capital, that is side lined now than ever in the history of our country. we unleash it, we get it not by raising taxes but by providing the regulatory certainty, the kind of pro-growth tax reform, including closing loopholes, to get economy growing.

the administration says, everyone needs to pay their fair share. i think that's certainly true. we're saying exactly that. and that's exactly what you do by engaging in pro-growth tax reform and closing loopholes. everyone is treated fairly. everyone pays their fair share. in fact, just to give you a sense of that whole concept, though, let's look at who pays the tax -- income taxes right now, according to the national taxpayer union. right now, today, the top 5% of taxpayers pay almost 60% of the income tax in this country. the top 10% pay almost 70% of the income tax in this country, the top 25% pay almost 90%, the top 50% of taxpayers pay 98% of the income tax that's paid in the country. so the point is, let's engage in

pro-growth tax reform that will get our economy growing, rather than stagnant, as it is today. and it is that growth -- that economic growth -- at that puts our people back to work and that truly generates the revenue. not higher tax rates which will hurt our growth. we can lower rates, close loop history, come up with a fairer system -- we can lower rates, close loopholes, come up with a fairer system that will generate growth. that is the only way -- that economic growth along with controlling and managing our spending -- that will get us on top of our debt and deficit and get americans back to work. we need do it in a bipartisan way. we can do it. we've done it b and we absolutely need to get started and get started now. for the good of the american people and the good of our country. and, mr. president, if i may, i want to close on one other note, one short message, and that is, as the house works on tax measures as i've described today

to extend the current tax rates and put news a situation where we can -- put us in a situation where we can engage in pro-growth tax reform, i also urge my colleagues in the house to make sure at the same time they're acting on farm bill legislation -- we passed a farm bill in the senate on a bipartisan basis -- i hope they're able to do the same thing, pass a farm bill in the house on a bipartisan basis, as well, that we can go to conference w i believe that the bill we produced in the senate and the bill they produced in the house ag committee can be brought together in a conference committee and we can pass a farm bill that will be cost-effecti cost-effective, that will save money, help reduce the deficit. the bill we passed would generate $23 billion in savings to help address the deficit. it would provide the right kind of safety net for our farmers and ranchers, and ultimately this: good farm policy benefits every

single american because our farmers and ranchers produce the highest-quality, lowest-cost food supply in the world, which benefits every single one of us. not to mention creating a lot of great jobs throughout the country. so i call on them to act on that farm bill as well as engaging in the kind of pro-growth tax reform that i know will truly, truly benefit our country. with that, mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma is recognized. mr. inhofe: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call in progress be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. inhofe: madam president, i am waiting now for them to bring

up a bill that i have filed today and will have a number to go with it, which i'll announce in just a moment. let me, first of all, say that the talk of the whole country right now is in the sequestration, the problems that we're having. i would only observe, i don't know why it's so difficult for people to understand, but president obama has written four budgets, and he -- these budgets have come before us. if you'll add up all of the deficits in the four budgets it comes to $5.3 trillion of deficits. and i suggest that is more deficit than all presidents in the history of this country for the past 200-plus years. and so people talk about how did we get into this mess. because when you have that kind of a deficit over a period of time, you wonder where it's kolg from. let me tell you where it didn't come from, it wasn't spent on, and that's military. i went over the first -- that

first budget that president obama had. i went over to afghanistan so i could make sure that i could get the attention of the american people and let them know just how this disarming of america by president obama was going. if you remember that first budget, madam president, that's one that, let's see, that cut out our only fifth generation fighter, the f-22, our lift capacity, the c-17, the future combat system, the ground-based interceptor in poland. that was just the first budget. then it's gotten worse since that time. since there isn't time to go into that detail year by year, oeupbld say that the president's -- i would only say that the president's cut in his budget over the next decade $487 billion, roughly $500 billion, a half a trillion dollars in defense spending over the next ten years. and i would suggest to you that

the american people -- and this is something that's very frustrating because they assume that when we send our kids into battle that they have the best of equipment. and this just flat isn't true. the pweurbgt have an -- the british have an as-90, better than ours; the russians the two s-19, better than ours; even africa south africa that is a system that is a better nonline of sight cannon than we have in our arsenal. the chinese have a j t-pb 10. it's -- the chinese have a j-10, and they are better than ours. the point i'm making here is that there just has been no emphasis. if you go out and you borrow and increase the deficit by $5.3 trillion as this president is doing, you'd think that we would be in a position to have a lot more robust military, but that's -- but the military's been consistently cut for that

period of time. now, the -- in the event that the obama sequestration as it's designed right now goes thrurbgs that will be another -- goes through, that will be another $500 billion that will come out of the military. even the president's own secretary of defense, secretary panetta, has said if these cuts take place, talking about the obama sequestration cuts, it would be -- quote -- "devastating to the military" we would have the smallest ground fleet since 1940, the smallest fleet of ships since 1915 and the smallest tactical fighter capability force in the history of the air force. so if you want us to, the united states to continue providing the type of global leadership our people have come to expect and meet the expectations of the american people -- when you talk to them, they are shocked when they find out other countries

have things that are better than we have. if you want to beat this, we're going to have to do something about the, number one, what's happening in the military and number, two, the sequestration. i've got it all in one bill, and in a minute we'll get a number for that bill. or do we have it already? anyway it's called the sequestration prevention act of 2012. and it replaces this sequestration cuts with some smart reforms. i'm going to run over those in just a minute to show you what they are. it repeals the sequester and replaces the $1.2 trillion and then has a lot of money left over. let me kind of go over what this bill would do. people keep saying we can't do anything about it. we can't do anything about the sequestration, the cuts. we had this great committee that's supposed possible out there finding $1.2 trillion over a ten-year period and yet we had a president who was able to give us the deficits of five times that much over just a four-year

period. well, what it does, first of all, to come up with this $1.2 trillion plus rebuilding the military, now we want to rebuild the military, in my estimation, up to 4% of g.d.p. for the last 100 years prior to 1990, for 100 years the average defense spending constituted 5.7% of g.d.p. that's average, in times of war, in times of peace. it's all the way down after his sequestration to below 3%, in other words about half of that. so what i want to do with the additional funds that come from this bill that i'm introducing today is put that back into the military and bring us up to 4% of g.d.p. still, considerably less than where we have been over the last 100 years. so the first thing it does, completely repeals obamacare. it adopts paul ryan's approach to block granting the medicaid program so that states have complete control over the

dollars that they use to reach their low-income populations with health care assistance. now, together, these two changes will reduce by $1.1 trillion over ten years. secondly, it returns nondefense discretionary, nondefense discretionary funding to the 2006 levels. when this president came in, that surged. the amount of the nondefense discretionary spending surged. this would have a savings over that period of time of $952 billion. thirdly, it block grants the food stamp program and converts it into discretionary programs so the states have complete control over the design of their nutrition assistance programs to best meet the needs of their low-income population. this provision reverses the massive expansion that we have seen of the food stamp program under the obama administration, which has literally doubled in

size, up to 100% since he took office. on president obama's inauguration day, just under 32 million people were on food stamps. today it's more than 46 million people. they received these benefits. so it's going to have to stop. it will continue to go up if we don't do something about it. this provision saves $285 billion. by the way, i think it's important when you look at the farm program, the farm program is really a welfare program because they increase the -- all of these provisions and call it part of the farm bill. that's a different subject. we'll talk about that later. not today but later. the fourth thing it does, the legislation reduces the federal work force by 10% through attrition. nobody out there is going to be fired, there are not going to be any cuts. in fact, it would continue to have some modest increases in payments for those who are there. through attrition, this cut would be about $144 billion over

ten years. the bill repeals the authority -- this is the fifth thing -- the authority for the federal government to spend any taxpayers' dollars on climate change or global warming. this is kind of interesting because very few people know that even though -- they remember that every time there has been a bill on cap-and-trade, a cost to the american people of somewhere between $300 billion a year and $400 billion a year -- sometimes in my home state of oklahoma, people's heads start spinning when you talk about these large amounts. so what we have done is i take the total number of families who file federal tax returns and i apply this to it. this would be about $3,000 per family in my state of oklahoma. yet, even the director of the e.p.a. admits that if we did this, it would not reduce co2 emissions worldwide. that's the director of the e.p.a., lisa jackson.

and that's on the record. i appreciate her honesty in that respect. so if we do this, right now what people don't know, this president has spent $68.4 billion since he has been president on all this global warming stuff. now, that's without authority because we have clearly defeated all of those bills. so what he has done through regulation is what he couldn't do through legislation, but nobody knows about it until now. now they know about it. anyway, if we stop doing that over the next ten years, that would save an additional $83 billion. and finally, the legislation includes comprehensive medical malpractice, tort reform. that same thing that was passed by the house of representatives, and that would be $74 billion over ten years. all told, all savings generated would be $2.6 trillion. not $1.2 trillion. $2.6 trillion. so don't let anyone tell you you can't get there from here because clearly you can get

there from here. now, we used the remaining amount to beef up the military to get back to our 4%, and i believe if you were to talk to the average american, they would say yeah, let's go ahead and do this, why aren't we doing it now? let me mention one other thing before i conclude. that is we have a thing called the warn act. what that does is require the american people -- the employers who know that because of scweefertion there is going -- sequestration that there is going to be layoffs, that they have to give pink slips at least 60 days prior to the time that happens. under sequestration, if they don't adopt my act, if they do that, those pink slips would have to be out there by november 2. now, the president doesn't want that to happen. he doesn't want the obama sequestration to be pointed out and identified as what's causing them to lose their jobs, so he is trying to get companies not to comply with this warn act. clearly, the warn act says an employer shall not order a plant

closing or mass layoff until the end of a 60-day period after the employer serves written notice of such an order. the warn act states -- this is very, very significant here, because if there are companies out there who are listening to the president when he is asking them not to issue the pink slips, this is what would happen to them. it states that any employer who orders a plant closing or a mass layoff in violation of section 3 shall be liable to each aggrieved employee who suffers an employment loss as a result of such closing or layoff. in other words, if he doesn't do it, then that opens the doors for all the trial lawyers to come in, and just imagine the case. lockheed martin, they say they are going to have to let go some 120,000 people. if they have a class action suit and each one who is let off would receive something like $1,000, that would be $120 million that that company would have to pay. and i can't imagine a board of directors of any company

anywhere in america not -- not complying with this legal act called the warn act. now, i know that -- i have a little bit of a problem here that i don't want to take the time from the senator that is in line to speak after me, but i would hike to serve notice that there have been several things that were said on the floor today concerning this whole idea of global warming. we had a hearing this morning, it was kind of revealing, because they have done everything they can to pass cap-and-trade and it has not happened. so i want to correct some of the statements that were made by members. so when the time comes that i have the -- about 20 minutes to do this, i would do that. it will probably have to be later today because of the clock that's running now. so i will yield the floor for my friend to take his turn. the presiding officer: the senator from colorado is recognized. mr. udall: madam president, good

afternoon. i rise this afternoon in support of the bipartisan cybersecurity act of 2012, and i want to share my concerns about the very real cyber threat facing our country. most importantly, i rise to urge all of my colleagues to move forward to the passage of this pending cybersecurity bill for the good of our national security. top experts and respected members of both political parties have told us that time is wasting. we must debate and pass this critically important piece of legislation. cybersecurity policy is an issue with which i am deeply involved. given my seats on the senate intelligence committee and the senate armed services committee. moreover, colorado's military and defense communities play a prominent role in defending our country, the united states, against cyber attacks. the air force space command located at peterson air force base in colorado springs is

responsible for protecting american space-based assets from network intrusions. the u.s. northern command also located at peterson air force base recently established a joint cyber center to help provideology on -- to help provide on-demand cyber. they also contribute hardware, software and expertise to the effort to keep our networks and infrastructure secure. our federal labs also conduct critical research into cybersecurity, most notably the national institute of standards and technology, otherwise known as nist, which is located in boulder. they play a key role in helping establish cybersecurity standards. the threats posed by cyber attacks, madam president, have long been recognized, but we in the congress have yet to act upon these threats in a comprehensive way.

as if we see the danger in front of us but yet we cannot find the courage to face it. what congress cannot afford to wait for a 9/11-sized attack in order to act. waiting for a catastrophic act, something that military and intelligence leaders and a bipartisan collection of national security experts are warning us against, is the exact opposite of leadership and the exact opposite of what our constituents expect us to do here. now, madam president, this debate to me has seemingly unfortunately unraveled into an antiquated argument about the public sector versus the private sector. we can't let all ways of thinking bog us down. this is a threat that can only be addressed by both the public and private sectors working together. the private sector owns 85% of our nation's critical infrastructure, which is itself heavily dependent on computer

networks. a successful attack on our critical infrastructure could result in disabled power grids, refineries and nuclear plants, disrupted rail systems and air traffic control and telecommunications networks. a successful attack could bring commerce to a halt. our financial markets to their knees. it could also escalate into a war in cyberspace for even -- or even a shooting war. to defend against these serious threats, particularly those that involve national security, there needs to be an exchange of information between the public and the private sectors. of course, allowing the government and industry to share information must be done with sufficient safeguards, so any legislation authorizing such sharing needs to strike a balance between privacy and civil liberties protections. now, i believe the bill's authors have achieved such a balance. i recognize that it's often difficult to find consensus on

how to defend our nation from security threats. sometimes that is because we can't agree on the nature of our vulnerabilities and in what priority to address them, and unfortunately sometimes congress is too polarized to act until after a crisis occurs. but, madam president, in the case of cybersecurity, we already know our nation's computer networks are increasingly vulnerable. there is widespread agreement about the severity of the threat. just last month, defense secretary panetta testified before congress that cyber attacks could virtually paralyze this country. the threat is not impending. it is here. we already know many of the steps we need to take to mitigate or prevent these attacks. the only thing getting in the way is politics. frankly, madam president, coloradans are tired of this. they want us to reason together

and solve our most vexing national challenges. the cybersecurity act of 2012 is not overly intrusive. it has been scaled back to a voluntary system of industry-driven security standards for critical infrastructure. the bill's authors have offered a further amendment to address some of the remaining concerns of the bill's opponents. and as much as the bill's authors have compromised and worked with groups and businesses from across the policy spectrum, you would think they would get more in return from the republicans than a demand to vote on the repeal of health care reform. but that's where the debate stands today, and it's not a proud moment for our chamber. madam president, the cybersecurity bill before us may not be perfect. in fact, i've offered three amendments that i believe make this an even stronger bill. the first would require the

administration to provide a detailed plan on how it would develop a highly trained, robust federal cybersecurity work force. a stronger federal work force will not only better protect government assets, but these individuals will go on to fill critical roles protecting cyber assets in the private sector. my second amendment would establish permanent faculty positions to train the next generation of military cyber leaders at the u.s. air force academy. my third amendment would require the assessment of the costs and benefits of building a strategic stockpile of extra-high voltage transformers. if we don't produce these highly pieces of specialized equipment domestically, and it would take months to replace transformers damaged by a physical or cyber attack. i hope that my colleagues will join me in passing these commonsense amendments aimed at improving our national security.

this cybersecurity bill is over three years in the making. i find it ironic that some argue that the process has been rushed and that we need more time. but i believe this bill is long overdue and that we simply cannot afford not to act. as the head of u.s. cyber command and the director of the security agency, general alexander, wrote in a letter to congress this week, the cyber threat facing the nation is real and demands immediate action. this is coming from the national security official who knows more than anyone about the cyber threats facing our country. as a member of the intelligence committee, i take his cautions and advice very seriously. the rest of us should as well. madam president, as i close i urge all of us, let's put aside

partisan employs and partisan differences. let's work together to amend and pass this vitally important cybersecurity bill. madam president, i yield the floor. i yield the floor, madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. inhofe: madam president, i unders the floor time is pretty much used up between now and 6:30 and i have made inquiries, so i understand i'll have time at 6:30 for 25 minutes, and so i ask unanimous consent that i be recognized at 6:30 for such time as -- for 25 minutes. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. inhofe: i understand the next speakers are in the cloakroom at this time so i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

mr. leahy: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from vermont is recognized. mr. leahy: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the privileges of the floor be granted to the following member of my staff. the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. mr. leahy: i ask unanimous consent the call of the quorum be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. leahy: i ask consent that jasper craven of my staff be given the privileges of the floor for the remainder of the day. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. leahy: madam president, i ask that jeanette quicken, a detailee of the banking committee staff as well as anjani augusta and gina quinn on senator johnson's staff be granted floor privileges for the remainder of today's session. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. leahy: i make that last request on behalf of the senator

from south dakota. madam president, unfortunately, we have not seen many times when we've seen legislation pass by solid bipartisan majorities, with some notable exceptions. it's been more than three months since an overwhelming majority of the senate joined us in our bipartisan effort passing the leahy-crapo violence against women reauthorization act of 2011. 68 votes, more than two-thirds of this body, including every

woman senator, republican and democratic. when we did that, the senate sent a very clear message. we said stopping domestic and sexual violence is a national priority. and we're going to stand together, republicans and democrats alike, to protect all victims from these devastating crime, all victims. it's very clear. if you're a visclosky of domestic and sexual violence, we're passing laws to help protect you. no matter where you are in this country. having sent such a strong bipartisan message from this body, i was -- i don't want to say bewildered or shocked to see the house republican leadership

abandon the bipartisan approach that was so successful in the senate. the speaker and the republican leadership in the house insisted on ignoring victims and the voices of the professionals in the field, actually many voices in both the republican and democratic party, and continues to delay this crucial legislation on a technicality, the technicality that is waived over and over and over again since i've been here in the senate. i think the senate should once again lead by example. and we can solve this problem tonight, madam president, tonight, within the next few hours. the senate republican leadership wants to get vawa, the violence against women act, done, it can be done. we can take up a house revenue

bill, substitute the bipartisan senate vawa bill, and send it to the house immediately. now, to those that are watching or listening this may sound like one of these legislative moves, but it's a simple thing i've seen done hundreds of times since i've been here and it would be our way of saying we want to stop violence against women, we have passed a bill that had republicans and democrats come together across the political spectrum, now we're saying to the other body to say follow our example. the majority leader reid proposed this path nearly two months ago but he's blocked by the republican side. so i'm saying is that just as 68 of us came together, republicans and democrats,

before, i would urge the republican leadership to stop blocking this from coming forward. we have only a precious few days left in this congress to get this bill passed. the procedural excuses must stop. the partisan politicking must end, just as senator crapo and i, two senators of different political philosophies, came together when we started this process so many months ago, we came together to focus on the victims, but also make good on our promise to stop domestic and sexual violence in all its forms against all victims. madam president, i've said so many times on this floor, this matter is deeply personal. i went to a lot of these crime scenes as a young prosecutor, a young prosecutor with a young

family. and when i would see a victim of violence, sometimes a -- bloodied and barely conscious victim being taken in an ambulance to the hospital, but more times seeing a bloody corpse on the floor. and then we find out as we unravel that had we had programs like we have in the violence against women act today, that we're reauthorizing, that had strong support from republicans and democrats in the past, if we had had those programs at that time, that we would not have had a dead body on the floor. madam president, i also learned is that the police officers who

came to help investigate that help get the perpetrator, they never asked was this victim a republican or a democrat, rich or poor, white or black, gay or straight, native american, immigrant, whatever, they just said as i've said so many times on the floor and the distinguished pliefer who herself was a prosecutor has said a victim is a victim is a victim. i don't want just to be able to arrest people after the person is dead. i want programs to stop the person from being abused in the first place. i want to protect victims before they become victims. madam president, if there is anything in this country that should unite all of us, it should be this. just as it united 68 of us

before. let's send it on to the other body, let's get it passed, let's get it on the president's desk and let's hope we save the lives of -- of people. and with that, madam president, i see other senators on the floor. i ask consent my full statement be made part of the record. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. mr. leahy: and i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut is recognized. mr. blumenthal: thank you, madam president. i'm really honored to follow the senator from vermont, who has been such an extraordinary leader in this area and look forward to yielding shortly to the senator from washington who has championed this bill and helped us all to see the urgency of approving it. in the minutes that i will be

talking and they will be brief minutes, every nine of them, every minute nine women will become victims of domestic abuse, every minute that i am standing here, every minute that we occupy with debate and delay on this measure, nine people in the united states, the greatest country in the history of the world, will become victims of domestic violence. we cannot afford to wait. and that is why i urge that my colleagues advance this critical piece of legislation and urge the house of representatives to agree to the senate version of this bill so that we can make this bill more inclusive to include native americans and immigrants and others who would not be covered by the house version. we find ourselves at a crossroads. we can either strengthen vawa or

we can retreat and go back, and i say let us go forward with the philosophy that the senator from vermont has just articulated so well as a prosecutor, not to mention knowing how our police work, we don't ask whether somebody is an immigrant, what their sexual preference is, whether they are a native american, we protect them if they are victims of domestic abuse and violence and that should be our philosophy in the greatest country in the history of the world. there are two protections for battered immigrant women in vawa that are particularly important. the first allows immigrant women, married to an abusive united states citizen, to apply for legal status independent of that spouse. the second, which is the u visa provides temporary status to victims who cooperate with law enforcement to prosecute their

abuser. the reauthorization of vawa is currently stalled principally because of the u-visa provisions in the senate bill, s. 1925. let me illustrate the importance of this provision with one story , a woman who came to connecticut from guatemala, fled her native country to escape her abuser, and arrived in connecticut in 2005. her abuser followed her to connecticut. he continued to abuse her. he was eventually deported to guatemala on criminal charges. but she found herself in another abusive relationship and eventually was able to find shelter at a domestic violence agency. she could not convince a family

to sponsor her so that she could apply for legal status. she would have nowhere to turn but for the transitional living facility and program for domestic violence and she was connected to a legal aid attorney who then enabled her to file for a new visa. i'm happy to report that this constituent survivor received her new visa in may of 2012 and because of vawa she is now safe and so is her son. this story is repeated countless times across connecticut and the country by women who suffer in silence. their undocumented status makes them particularly vulnerable and powerless to escape their abusive situation. my constituents tell me -- and i

want to listen to them -- that we cannot afford to compromise those basic protections that are fundamental to human rights and dignity, and that is why i urge this body and the congress as a whole to move forward, not backward. again, every minute, nine women, nine people in this great country, become victims of domestic violence. the consequences are of this horrific problem are too high and the costs are too dire to stay the course and simply repeat the inaction that we have seen so far. thousands of victims of domestic violence are entrusting us with their safety today. we have an obligation to them to avoid the gamesmanship, to end the gridlock and move forward with s. 1925. and, madam president, i thank

you, and i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from washington is recognized. mrs. murray: thank you very much, madam president. and i want to thank senator leahy and senator blumenthal and so many others who've come to the floor to speak on this really critical issue. madam president, today the women of the senate and the men who support the violence against women act are here on the floor to give speaker baner and the republicans -- speaker boehner and the republicans another chance to do the right thing. it's another chance to stop the delay. it's another chance to provide the peace of mind to 30 million women whose protections are at risk, and it's another chance to pass the inclusive, bipartisan senate violence against women act bill. madam president, the bipartisan senate bill passed almost a hundred days ago by a vote here in the senate of 68-31. 15 of our republican colleagues on the floor -- let me repeat

that -- 15 republicans joined us that day and they did so because they know the history of this bill. they know that every time the violence against women act has been reauthorized, it has consistently included bipartisan provisions to address the women that have not been protected. they know that domestic violence protections for all women should not be a democratic or a republican issue. but here we are back on the senate floor urging support today for a bill that should not be controversial. and just as we did last week, just as we are doing today, and just as we will do in the coming weeks, we will be making sure this message resonates loud and clear, both here in washington, d.c. and back home in all of our states because we are not going to back down. not while there are thousands of

women in the country who are excluded from the current law. madam president, the numbers are staggering. one in three native americans will be raped in their lifetime. one in three native americans will be raped in their lifetime. two in five of them are victims of domestic violence and they are killed at ten times the rate of the national average. and those shocking statistics aren't isolated to one group of women. 25% to 35% of women in the lgbt community experience domestic violence in their relationships. three in four -- three in fou four -- of immigrant women who are abused never enter the process to obtain legal status even though they are eligible. why? because their abuser husbands never filed their paperwork. so this should make it perfectly clear to our colleagues in the other chamber that their current inaction has a real impact on the lives of women across

america affected by violence. where a person lives, their immigration status, who they love should not determine whether or not their perpetrator of domestic violence is brought to justice. madam president, last week "the new york times" ran an editorial on the bill that gets to the heart of where we are, and it began by saying -- quote -- "house republicans have to decide which is more important: protecting victims of domestic violence or advancing the harsh antigay and antiimmigrant sentiments of some of their party's far rate. and at the moment, harshness is winning." but the editorial also made the point that it does not have to be this way and pointed out -- and i quote -- "in may, 15 senate republicans joined with the chamber's democratic majority to approve a strong reauthorization bill. and finally that editorial ended with what we all know it will

take to move this bill forward -- leadership from congress macongressman boehner. and madam president, today the effort we started with and the effort we continue for as long as it takes is a call for the same thing -- leadership. it's time for speaker boehner to look beyond ideology and partisan politics. it's time for him to look at the history of a bill that again and again has been supported and expanded by republicans and democrats and end the delaymen . because, frankly, it's tak takia toll. every moment that the house continues to delay is another moment that 30 million vulnerable women are left without the protections they deserve in this country. madam president, the women this bill protects have seen their lives destroyed by the court is ocowardiceof those who claim to. we have a chance to stand up for

them where others have not. but the only way we can help protect these women is to prove as a authorization we have the courage to do so. the courage to show them that discrimination has no place in our domestic violence laws. and to do that, we need to pass the senate's inclusive bipartisan violence against women act. mrs. boxer: will my friend yield before she makes her unanimous consent request? mrs. murray: i will yield. mrs. boxer: i have some questions. i want to make sure everyone who's listening to this debate gets what's about to happen now. is it not true that the senate passed a bipartisan leahy-crapo violence against women act with well more than 60 votes; is that correct? mrs. murray: the senator from california is correct. mrs. boxer: is it not correct that the house passed its version and left out 30 million americans? mrs. murray: the senator is correct. in fact, those 30 million americans would be covered under the senate bill. we make sure that native

american women are covered. we put in important provisions to make sure that campus violence is covered, and those provisions have been left out of the house bill. mrs. boxer: yes. and the immigrant women, as you have discussed, who, as senator blumenthal pointed out, are the most vulnerable because they're so afraid of their status, they're very scared to report that someone is raping them, beating them, harming them every single day. is that not correct? mrs. murray: the senator from california is absolutely correct. we can't even imagine what it's like to have somebody have that kind of power over you and use it to beat you day in and day out. we cover those women in this bill so they have the protections that they ought to have as human beings. mrs. boxer: so is it not fair to say that the 30 million people that we cover that the house leaves out include college students, enhanced protections for them on campus; lgbt

community; native american wom women; and undocumented immigrants; is that correct? mrs. murray: the senator from california is correct. mrs. boxer: and as my friend pointed out, is it not true that when you look at the rates of violence -- violence against these particular people in our community, they are higher than the population at large? mrs. murray: the senator from california is cec. mrs. boxer: so isn't it fair to say that the house bill, their version of the violence against women act, left out the most vulnerable people who are the most susceptible to violence? mrs. murray: the senator from california is correct, and that is what we are -- have worked to do in a bipartisan fashion in the senate, to make sure that in this country of america, that we do not discriminate against women when it comes to violence. mrs. boxer: and i just have two more points and then i'm going to yield back my question time to my friend so she can make a unanimous consent request. isn't it also true that the

excuse that speaker boehner is giving as to why he won't take up and pass the senate bill, the bipartisan senate bill, the leahy-crapo bill, isn't it true that the excuse that he is giving is the fact that there's a technical problem, which he calls a blue slip, in the senate bill, and isn't it true that my friend today is going to ask unanimous consent to correct that problem so that we can send this inclusive bill over to speaker boehner; is that correct? mrs. murray: well, the senator from california is correct. it seems to me such a simple procedure to do, which we have done many times here in the united states senate, to just by unanimous consent send the speaker back a bill so he can't put a piece of blue paper in front of us and say, that stands between women and the protections that we are trying to pass for them today. mrs. boxer: so finally, i would say this. i would hope that when my friend makes her unanimous consent request to take the very same

text of the violence against women act that passed this body with well over 60 votes and put it into a bill that would now overcome the technical problem and enable us to send to the house, it is my strong hope that the republican leadership will not object. and if they do, let the whole country understand what they are objecting to -- a way to fix this technical problem so that speaker boehner and the republicans can pass the senate bipartisan violence against women act and include 30 million people who have been left out. i thank my friend for yielding. mrs. murray: and i would thank the senator from california and say she's absolutely correct. what i'm about to do is ask consent, similar to what we've done on many pieces of legislation, including the transportation and jobs bill that the senator from california was able to pass, and the senate overcame that technicality through a motion on the floor. we have done it time and time

again on bills like that. it seems to me that on a bill like this that is affecting so many women and their right to protect themselves and their ability to get help and their communities to support them, should not have a technicality between themselves and our passing country protections for them. so having said that, madam president, madam president, i now ask unanimous consent that the finance committee be discharged from further consideration of h.r. 9 and the senate proceed to its consideration, that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the language of s. 1925, the violence against women act reauthorization, as passed in the senate on april 26 by a vote of68-31 be inserted in lieu thereof. that the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid on the table with no intervoong action or debate, and any statements relating to the

bill be placed in the record at the appropriate place as if read. the presiding officer: is there objection. mr. grassley: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from iowa. mr. grassley: rather than doing their usual thing of reserving the right to object, i will object and then i -- i would appreciate courtesy before i offer a parallel u.c. to make my remarks. mrs. murray: madam president, if i understood -- the presiding officer: the senator from washing washington. mrs. murray -- the senator from iowa has objected to my request? the presiding officer: the objection has been heard. mr. grassley: madam president? the senatothe presiding officere senator from washington. mrs. murray: madam president, the senator from iowa has objected. i just have to say that it is stunning to me that the senator has objected to a simple procedure that we have done many times on transportation bills and f.a.a. bills. and that leaves us the inability to provide the protections for the w